Smartphones are often used in order to make purchases today and mobile payments are estimated to continue growing in numbers the following years. This makes mobile payment systems attractive to companies as a new business platform. It also increases the number of malicious users trying to exploit the systems for financial gain. This thesis is conducted for the company TaxiCaller which desires to integrate mobile payments into their existing service. It discusses the current security standards for mobile payments and evaluates existing mobile payment solutions. The focus of the evaluation is on the security of the solutions and vulnerabilities, as well as mitigations of identified vulnerabilities, are discussed. Based on the evaluation, a mobile payment solution is designed and implemented. This system fully integrates with TaxiCaller’s existing system. A threat analysis of the implemented mobile payment solution is performed to provide confidence in the security. This thesis also provides an insight into the ecosystem of mobile payments including the stakeholders, the regulations, the security standards and difficulties during implementations.

M.Com. (Informatics) / This research has the aim of creating a low-cost, contactless, micro-payment framework to support micro-payments for the informal taxi industry in South Africa. The informal taxi industry is a prime example of an industry that needs simple and effective payments for low-cost services where the primary medium of payment is currently cash. Challenges of currently used are the security of cash, the difficulty for the taxi driver to collect cash, and the auditability of cash from the perspective of the taxi owner. Furthermore, the taxi owner does not know the routes the taxi travels or the petrol that is used by the taxi. Micro-payment transaction volumes are rapidly increasing due to consumer need for simple and effective payments for low-cost items and services. Micro-payment technologies are rapidly growing in popularity and demand, prompting the need for financial institutions to consider investment in the technology. Contactless technology, specifically near-field communication (NFC), is contributing to the exponential growth of micro-payments. Increasingly, consumers are not required to enter security information in order to perform transactions. By bringing a compatible card within range of a suitable reader, a transaction takes place with immediate effect, with little or no involvement from payment providers and financial institutions. Complementary wireless technologies such as GPS enable a multitude of applications by offering positional and speed information. Combining GPS technology with NFC enables contactless positional payment information to be accessible, to present a unique micro-payment concept. This dissertation presents M-Thinta, a low-cost contactless micro-payment model. The M-Thinta prototype demonstrates the real-world operation of the M-Thinta model. The prototype demonstrates that it is possible to create a functional low-cost, contactless micro-payment platform by combining a number of standard low-cost components.

No abstract available. / Dissertation (M Com (Economics))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Economics / Unrestricted

Measuring and monitoring performance of employees is an integral part of management. The need for an effective appraisal system to manage and monitor the performance of employees is self-evident in this country. The appraisal system for office-based educators is informed by the Education Labour Relations Council (ELRC) Collective Agreement No. 3 of 2002, which was signed on 11 December 2002. This appraisal system was developed with good intensions of enhancing the performance of office-based educators, and the prime aim being to manage and improve service delivery at all levels in the system. The objective of the study is to investigate the perceptions of the office-based educators on the implementation of the appraisal system. Do office-based educators perceive it that way? As implementers and direct beneficiaries, are the good intensions of the policy yielded when its implementation is faced with realities and practicalities of the implementation of the policy? The vehicle I used to achieve the goal of the study was quantitative approach. Self administered questionnaires were completed by respondents. The questionnaire consisted of one open-ended question which gave the respondents sufficient room to voice their opinions without restrictions and the close-ended questions. The sample was the whole population of the office-based educators in the Dr Ruth S. Mompati district office, department of education, North West province. The total number is only 103 and it was manageable. The analysis of data is illustrated in the form of tables, graphs and brief discussions. A written undertaking to guarantee confidentiality to respondents was given and all respondents signed the undertaking to indicate their voluntary participation. The study is significant in that the findings and recommendations might inform policy custodians on the status and improvement of the quality of the implementation of the appraisal system. Copyright / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted

Background: The United States health care system faces two fundamental challenges: a high growth rate of health care spending and deficiencies in quality of care. The growth rate of health care spending is the dominant driver of our nation’s long-term federal debt, while the inconsistent quality of care hinders the ability of the health care system to maximize value for patients. To address both of these challenges, public and private payers are increasingly changing the way they pay providers—moving away from fee-for-service towards global payment contracts for groups of providers coming together as accountable care organizations. This thesis evaluates the change in health care spending and in quality of care associated with moving to global payment for accountable care organizations in Massachusetts in the first 4 years. This thesis studies the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Alternative Quality Contract (AQC), a global payment contract that provider organizations in Massachusetts began to enter in 2009. The AQC pays provider organizations a risk-adjusted global budget for the entire continuum of care for a defined population of enrollees insured by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. It also awards substantial pay-for-performance incentives for organizations meeting performance thresholds on quality measures. This work assesses its effect on spending and quality through the first 4 years of the contract. Methods: Enrollee-level claims data from 2006-2012 were used with a difference-in-differences design to evaluate the changes in spending and quality associated with the Alternative Quality Contract over the first 4 years. The study population consisted of enrollees in Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts plans (intervention group) and enrollees in commercial employer-sponsored plans across 5 comparison states (control group). Unadjusted and adjusted results are reported for each comparison between intervention and control. Changes in spending for all 4 AQC cohorts relative to control were evaluated. In adjusted analyses of spending, I used a multivariate linear model at the enrollee-quarter level, controlling for age, sex, risk score, indicators for intervention, quarters of the study period, the post-intervention period, and the appropriate interactions. For analyses of quality, an analogous model at the enrollee-year level was used. Process and outcome quality were evaluated. Results: Seven provider organizations joined the AQC in 2009, with a total of 490,167 individuals who were enrolled for at least 1 calendar year in the study period. The control group had 966,813 unique individuals enrolled for at least 1 year during the study period. Average age, sex, and risk scores before and after the AQC were similar between the two groups. In the 2009 cohort, claims spending grew on average $62.21 per enrollee per quarter less than control over 4 years (p<0.001), a 6.8% savings. Analogously, the 2010, 2011, and 2012 cohorts had average savings of 8.8% (p<0.001), 9.1% (p<0.001), and 5.8% (p=0.04), respectively, by the end of 2012. Savings on claims were concentrated in the outpatient facility setting, specifically procedures, imaging, and tests (8.7%, 10.9%, and 9.7%, respectively, p<0.001). Organizations with and without risk-contracting experience saw similar average savings of 6.3% and 7.7%, respectively, over 4 years (p<0.001). About 40% of savings were explained by lower volume. Pre-intervention trends were not statistically different between intervention and control (-$4.57, p=0.86), suggesting savings were not driven by inherently different trajectories of spending. No differences in coding intensity were found. In sensitivity analyses, estimates were robust to alterations in the model, variables, and sample. Notably, claims savings were exceeded by incentive payments to providers (shared savings and quality bonuses) in 2009-2011, but exceeded incentives payments in 2012, generating net savings. Improvements in quality among intervention cohorts generally exceeded New England and national comparisons. Quality performance on chronic care measures increased from 79.6% pre-intervention to 84.5% post-intervention in the 2009 cohort, compared to 79.8% to 80.8% for the HEDIS national average, a 3.9 percentage-point relative increase over the 4 years. Analogously, preventive care and pediatric care measures increased 2.7 and 2.4 percentage points relative to control, respectively. On outcome measures, achievement of hemoglobin A1c, LDL cholesterol, and blood pressure control grew by 2.1 percentage points per year in the 2009 cohort after the AQC, while HEDIS averages remained largely unchanged (Figure). Conclusion: After 4 years, physician organizations in the AQC had lower spending growth relative to control and generally outperformed national averages on quality measures. Shared savings coupled with quality bonuses can exceed savings on claims in initial years, but over time, savings on claims may outgrow incentive payments. Incentive payments themselves may serve meaningful purposes, as quality measures may protect against stinting and shared savings may help ease providers into risk contracts. Changes in utilization suggest that this payment model can help modify underlying care patterns, a likely prerequisite for sustainable reform. The AQC experience may be useful to policymakers, insurers, and providers embarking on payment reform. Combining global budgets with pay-for- performance may encourage organizations to embark on the delivery system reforms necessary to slow spending and improve quality.

En dépit de la production standardisée de millions d'enregistrements décrivant année après année l'activité d'hospitalisation complète en France, aucune étude globale, aucun suivi précis et répété dans le temps, n'a pu être mené à partir de ces données.Si ces données sont exploitées dans une grande variété d'études spécifiques, elles peinent à trouver une utilisation significative dans l'analyse de l'activité et du recrutement des établissements de santé, ou dans celle des besoins de la population. Tout un pan d'analyse de l'efficience du système de santé reste ainsi inaccessible.Nous nous fixons comme objectif de contribuer à développer un cadre précis d'exploitation de ces données. Cette démarche se fera en trois temps :- Définition d'une méthode de consolidation des données ;- Construction de référentiels d'analyse des données ;- Elaboration de méthodes d'analyse sur deux thématiques générales : la caractérisation de l'activité des établissements et l'étude de leur recrutement, avec exemple d'application de ces méthodes. / Millions of computerized records describing inpatient hospitalization activity are produced year after year in France.In spite of the availability of this massive amount of data, no global, iterative and well calibrated related study on health system efficiency has been possible.There are of course many specific studies partially or totally relying on these data, but their systematic use for assessing hospital activity, catchment areas or population health needs remains to be implented.Our work aims to contribute to create a methodological framework for analyzing these data through a three step approach :- Definition of data consolidation methods ;- Creation of adequate data repositories ;- Determination of analysis methods for two general topics : hospital activity characterization and study, with example applications.

Organ donation is traditionally based on the notion of making a gift based on altruism. An important aspect of ‘altruistic gifting’ is commitment to a solidaristic approach to meeting transplant needs. In line with this, people are encouraged to donate their organs at death to a common pool for collective provision, or donate a live organ to another freely. Given a chronic organ shortage, proposals have been made to change this system to increase donation. Proposals include introducing some organ market or payment in the form of a reward to incentivise live or deceased donation. However, these proposals have been opposed because of the grip of ‘altruistic gift’ as the only ethically acceptable way to procure and distribute organs. To support the ethical acceptability of other systems, ‘altruistic gift’ has been subject to various criticisms. One criticism is the moral relevance of altruism: people may donate on other motives other than altruism; or, altruism is not the motive that underpins most deceased organ donations. Another criticism is the moral value of altruism: even if deceased organ donations are in general altruistic, altruism does not express communal virtues like generosity that support solidarity. A third criticism is the value of the concept of altruism when understood in the pure sense: ‘pure altruism’ fashions an unnecessary or false dichotomy – gift versus sale – in the way people can ethically relate and help each other. Consistent with or following this criticism, it has been argued that use of a financial reward to incentivise donation can be compatible with preserving donation as altruistic albeit in a ‘non-pure’ sense. ‘Altruism’ and reward can co-exist as motives for donation. This thesis concerns itself centrally with the third criticism. It argues that the concept of altruism delineates a distinctive moral ‘perspective’ of a common humanity that engenders a devotion to others’ interests. Accordingly, as I argue, ‘non-pure’ definitions of altruism are misleading as to how a financial reward can be compatible with altruism. From this, the thesis argues that introduction of a financial reward for organ donation would not preserve donation as altruistic. Based on an understanding of altruism as also a motive for ‘creative’ relationships, the thesis counters criticisms of its relevance and value to deceased organ donation under a gift model. As part of its legal analysis, the thesis considers the antithesis of ‘altruistic gift’: the idea of organs as property which places individual control on their disposition at its moral centre. It has been argued that organs should be owned as property so that individuals can sell them, or transmit them to relatives so that relatives can claim payment from donation. To provoke thought on whether organs should be owned as private property like any other, the thesis proposes an inheritance regime for organs with family as default successor.

This diploma thesis aims to assess the issue of housing cooperatives in terms of law, accounting and tax. The part relating to law is based on Business Corporations Act and the new Civil Code. Using the coherent application example, the work tries to show the specifics related to housing associations in the field of tax and accounting, which include settlement of advances, billing advances for the normal operation of cooperati-ves, billing additional membership contributions and repair fund. In parts relating to taxes is pointed to obligations arising from tax laws. For this thesis was determined following hypothesis: Rent from members of the cooperative to cover the cost of normal operation is accounted through profit or loss.

The thesis analyse the most important payment systems in the world as well as in Czech republic. The thesis also includes the analysis of internet payment systems available for czech e-shops.

The graduation thesis deals with bills of exchange/promissory notes with the focus on their present possibilities of use. Thus, the thesis combines the legal point of view with the practical point of view. First part of the thesis provides basic information about bills of exchange/promissory notes and their specific qualities. Furthermore, this part concerns about declarations made on them such as acceptance, aval and endorsement. The second part focuses on economic importance of bills of exchange/promissory notes and reveals different functions bills of exchange/promissory notes can have. At the end there is an overview summing up both parts.