Group Discounts Compatible with Buyer Privacy
This addresses privacy concerns for buyers in e-commerce or group purchasing scenarios, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing concepts like anonymous payment systems.
The paper tackles the problem of offering group discounts while preserving buyer anonymity by introducing a protocol that allows a group to prove its size without revealing identities, coupled with an anonymous payment system to ensure privacy.
We show how group discounts can be offered without forcing buyers to surrender their anonymity, as long as buyers can use their own computing devices (e.g. smartphone, tablet or computer) to perform a purchase. Specifically, we present a protocol for privacy-preserving group discounts. The protocol allows a group of buyers to prove how many they are without disclosing their identities. Coupled with an anonymous payment system, this makes group discounts compatible with buyer privacy (that is, buyer anonymity).