An online payment system permits a consumer to make a payment to an online merchant or a supplier. Payment portal, a channel between consumers and payment processors, use numerous security tools to secure a consumer's payment information, ordinarily card data, during an online transaction. However, the security provided by a payment portal cannot completely protect a consumer's payment information when a merchant is also allowed to obtain the payment information in specific form. Moreover, not

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... ll merchants provide a secure payment environment to their consumers and, in spite of having a standard payment plan, adhere to it. Consequently, this exposes a consumer's payment information to risks of being compromised or misused by merchants or stolen by hackers and spammers. In this paper we propose a new approach for online transaction in which a consumer's payment information is minimized to that is only needed for transfer of funds. A consumer sends his payment information directly to a payment portal and a payment portal, upon verifying the consumer, allows the transaction and sends a payment receipt to the appropriate merchant. We use the text steganography and visual cryptography to securely transfer funds to a merchant and protect a consumer's payment data from any Internet susceptibilities.