Information home electric appliance

A recording medium storing therein a computer program that is executed in an information home electric appliance for use in an electronic account settlement of products purchased via a credit card at a virtual store on a communication medium, said information home electric appliance having an Internet accessing capability, said computer program comprising:

• for use in initial user registration for shopping at a virtual store by a card member who is a user of the information home electric appliance, a function that allows the information home electric appliance to communicate with a card issuer's server, which is compliant with the encryption communication protocol, in response to an instruction from the user to input to the server a card number, personal information for identifying the card member, and password information for electronic account settlement decided by the card member;
• a function that receives, from the card issuer's server, information for authenticating the card member in accordance with the encryption communication protocol and personal information on the card member and stores the received information into a storage device in said information home electric appliance;
• and, for use in purchasing products at the virtual store, a function that allows the information home electric appliance to communicate with a site of the virtual store in response to an instruction from the user;
• a function that requests the user to input said password information for electronic account settlement and compares the entered password information with password information stored in said appliance to confirm that the user is the card member who requested the initial user registration via said information home electric appliance;
• a function that sends order information to a server of the virtual store in response to an instruction from the user;
• a function that accesses a settlement server of said card issuer via the Internet in response to an instruction from the server of the virtual store that received the order information;
• and
• a function that authenticates the card member with the settlement server using the information for authenticating the card member and then sends the personal information stored in the storage device to the settlement server.

A computer program that is executed in an information home electric appliance for use in an electronic account settlement of products purchased via a credit card at a virtual store on a communication medium, said information home electric appliance having an Internet accessing capability, said computer program comprising:

• for use in initial user registration for shopping at a virtual store by a card member who is a user of the information home electric appliance, a function that allows the information home electric appliance to communicate with a card issuer's server, which is compliant with an encryption communication protocol, in response to an instruction from the user to input to the server a card number, personal information for identifying the card member, and password information for electronic account settlement decided by the card member;
• a function that receives, from the card issuer's server, information for authenticating the card member in accordance with the encryption communication protocol and personal information on the card member and stores the received information into a storage device in said information home electric appliance;
• and, for use in purchasing products at the virtual store, a function that allows the information home electric appliance to communicate with a site of the virtual store in response to an instruction from the user;
• a function that requests the user to input said password information for electronic account settlement and compares the entered password information with password information stored in said appliance to confirm that the user is the card member who requested the initial user registration via said information home electric appliance;
• a function that sends order information to a server of the virtual store in response to an instruction from the user;
• a function that accesses a settlement server of said card issuer via the Internet in response to an instruction from the server of the virtual store that received the order information;
• and
• a function that authenticates the card member with the settlement server using a private key and a digital certificate of the card member and then sends the personal information stored in the storage device to the settlement server.