the merchant owns an online shop and the user 39 s first terminal t 1 connects itself to the merchant through the internet to purchase the product once the user 39 s first terminal t 1 is connected to the merchant m or to the merchant 39 s online shop the user chooses the product p to be acquired the user 39 s first terminal t 1 forms a request r 1 containing at least a user identifier u id a product identifier p id and a financial institution identifier b id the user identifier u id may not be necessary on the merchant 39 s level but is used by the financial institution b managing the payment associated with the transaction the product identifier p id is necessary to determine which product the user intends to purchase once the product p is identified the merchant is able to determine the cost for that product i e the amount amt of the transaction the identifier of the financial institution b id is used by the merchant to determine which financial institution to deal with and to contact the request r 1 that is sent from the user to the merchant is usually in unencrypted it should be appreciated however that the request could be encrypted for example when the merchant requires a registration of its users prior to authorizing a transaction the user identifier u id should however be unencrypted to enable the merchant to determine which user sent the request once the merchant receives the request r 1 the merchant determines from this request the financial institution b to deal with this.