Design and Implementation of a Web-based, Multi-user Payment Service Using the Django Framework: An Online Payment Service Assignment Brief

About This Assignment Brief

1. Introduction

This assignment is about the design and implementation of a web-based, multi-user payment service using the Django framework. The system is a much-simplified version of PayPal. Through a web interface, users should be able to send money to other registered users (e.g., using their registered email address as their unique identifier), request money from other registered users and manage their account (e.g., look at their recent transactions). Super-users (i.e., admins) should be able to access all user accounts and transactions.

After completing the assignment, you will have demonstrated that you can:

• design and implement user interfaces using Templates
• design and implement business logic using Views
• design and implement data access using Models
• design and implement a secure multi-user system

2. Project Description

Online payment services, such as PayPal, allow users to connect their online accounts to their bank accounts, debit and credit cards. In such systems, users can usually transfer money from their bank accounts to the online account, receive payments to this account from other users, and push money from the online account to their bank accounts, among others.

For simplicity, we will assume in this project that all registered users start with a specific amount of money (e.g., £750) and no connections to bank accounts exist.

Note: This is pretend money, and no connection to real sources of money should exist.

To register, a user must provide a username, a first and last name, an email address and a password. Each user has a single online account whose currency is selected upon registration. Users can choose to have their account in GB Pounds, US dollars or Euros. In any case, the system should make the appropriate conversion to assign the right initial amount of money (e.g., if the baseline is £750, then the initial amount should be 750 * GBP_to_Euros_rate euros).

A user can instruct the system to make a direct payment to another user. If this request is accepted (i.e., the recipient of the payment exists, and there are enough funds), money is transferred (within a single Django transaction) to the recipient immediately. Users should be able to check for notifications regarding payments in their accounts.

A user can instruct the system to request payment from some other user. A user should be able to check about such notifications for payment requests. They can reject the request or, in response to it, make a payment to the requesting user.

Users can access all their transactions, that is, sent and received payments and requests for payments, as well as their current account balance.

An administrator can see all user accounts and all transactions.

A separate RESTful web service must implement currency conversion. The exchange rates will be statically assigned (hard-coded) in the RESTful service source code.