EZPay is a web-based P2P (peer-to-peer) electronic wallet, similar to the popular PayPal. The EZPay online financial infrastructure builds on the existing financial infrastructure of bank accounts and credit cards to create a global, real-time payment solution. It provides a simple and secure way for any business or customer with an email address to securely, conveniently, and cost-effectively send and receive payments online. EZPay allows customers to fund their e-wallets from their credit card accounts and e-check accounts and send payments to merchants’ and other customers’ e-wallets. Merchants can in turn make payouts to customers for refunds, rebates and winnings. Moreover, merchants can accept payments on their own web sites from customers who possess an EZPay account. EZPay can integrate seamlessly with third party processors for echecks and credit cards to enable funding of customers’ e-wallets.

The following is a list of some of the activities that a customer is able to do with a EZPay account:

• Send money to another EZPay customer using that customer’s email address or to any other individual as long as that individual has a valid email address.
• Receive money from another EZPay customer by accessing his/her EZPay account. Customers will receive notifications whenever money has been sent to them via EZPay.
• Send bills to other EZPay customers and other individuals for collection via EZPay. Non-EZPay customers will receive notifications via email along with instructions on signing-up and making bill payments via EZPay.
• Fund their EZPay accounts using their credit cards, using their checking accounts or using bank wire transfers.
• Access their EZPay accounts to check their fund balance at any point in time from an Internet-enabled computer.
• Access their EZPay accounts to view a history of all of their transactions.

The EZPay web application is built on top of Microsoft’s ASP.NET platform (C# programming language) and connected to a robust SQL server database for data storage. It uses XML (eXtensible Markup Language) for its web services interface, intra-application data communication, application configuration and in-memory data storage.