Credentials Management for High-Value Transactions

Abstract

Partner key management (PKM) is an interoperable credential management protocol for online commercial transactions of high value. PKM reinterprets traditional public key infrastructure (PKI) for use in high-value commercial transactions, which require additional controls on the use of credentials for authentication and authorization. The need for additional controls is met by the use of partner key practice statements (PKPS), which are machine-readable policy statements precisely specifying a bank’s policy for accepting and processing payment requests. As assurance is crucial for high-value transactions, we use an access-control logic to: (1) describe the protocol, (2) assure the logical consistency of the operations, and (3) to make the trust assumptions explicit.