Khalifa University faculty member Prof. Ernesto Damiani leader of EBTIC’s Big Data initiative and Director of the University’s Information Security Research Center has recently received a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Grant totaling $100 000 USD in order to support his project aimed at improving secure payment systems in developing countries.
The project called “Pay with a Selfie” uses personal pictures or ‘selfies’ as a form of safe exchange of money in places that may not possess other viable technologies for custom such as debit or credit machines and where cash may be difficult to obtain due to a lack of banks or ATMs.
The system requires both purchaser and merchant to carry a simple phone and to visually identify themselves and details of the purchase in a photo for example they can hold a card or price tag that can be captured in a single photograph. Dr. Damiani and his fellow researchers made up of EBTIC researchers fellow Khalifa University faculty members and students will build software that uses visual cryptography to divide the photograph into two parts or shares one sent to each phone. When a network connection is encountered the shares are transmitted to a third party who runs a point-of-service and reconstructs the image thereby validating the transaction before transferring payment. This method enables transactions between individuals in low network connectivity areas and can even help those who may be illiterate.
Dr. Damiani and his team will be working closely with the Institut de Mathématiques et de Sciences Physiques (IMSP) of Abomey-Calavi University in Benin to test the system by making students at the university “champions of the technology.” The plan is to allow students to first test it on campus and then to introduce it to their home towns and villages.
