Abstract: The present invention proposes a payment method for paying by a mobile terminal (1) through a communication network, the method comprising the steps of:—providing (S2) information on a transaction effected with a third party (2) using the mobile terminal (1),—judging (S4, S6), whether said information fulfills a predetermined criterion of a plurality of predetermined criteria, and—selecting (S5, S7, S8), dependent on the result of said judging step, a corresponding one out of a plurality of payment modes (8, 9, 10; Mode 1, Mode 2, Mode 3) for said transaction.

Abstract: A method and apparatus that provides improved management of the charging process over a network is disclosed. The present invention uses a payment system to handle the contract negotiation process. The payment system includes a trusted server, the trusted server prepares a contract for a transaction between a merchant system and a buyer system, sends the prepared contract to the buyer system for acceptance by a user of the buyer system and returns the accepted contract to the merchant system wherein the merchant system initiates the transaction based upon the accepted contract and a charging engine for calculating a charge to be paid to the merchant system by the user based upon feedback from the merchant system.