Abstract

SAML federations provide students the possibility to use their home university’s account even in case they decide to study one or more semesters abroad. The visited university can rely on the identity information transmitted via the federation’s mechanisms. However, when services at the visited university require payment, such as using a printer, the roaming student is nevertheless required to have a local account, since the federation does not support payment.
Therefore, the purpose of this research paper is to provide information about changes and enhancements to the federation’s architecture as well as to the used protocol, i.e., SAML, to enable payment within SAML federations. Thus, the SAML definitions have been taken as fundamentals for payment related enhancements. Furthermore, the enhanced federation was validated and prototypically implemented to prove correctness and real-life usage. This led to the result that it is feasible to provide payments within a SAML federation as long as the modifications proposed within this paper are carried out.