Development of a scalable, fault tolerant, and low cost cluster-based e-payment system with a distributed functional kernel

In this paper is presented the design and implementation of a payment gateway. It acts as a mediator among an e-Commerce, a final customer computer, mobile phone or other network access device and a bank host. The gateway was designed using modern software engineering tools (such as unified modeling language, design patterns, etc.), implemented using a functional language (ERLANG/OTP) and supports the typical features of other common payment gateways. The design and implementation pays a lot of attention to its architecture (using distributed computing to improve service availability -scalability, fault-tolerance-) and to the chance of apply formal verification tools and techniques to improve system design and performance, and to ensure system correctness. The architecture and ideas proposed in this paper are intended to be a first step towards the implementation of other and more complex payment systems.