An attachment that may be coupled to a wireless communication device, such
as a cellular telephone, personal digital assistant (PDA), or the like,
to perform commercial or other information transactions, as well as to an
apparatus or system for conducting such transactions. The wireless
communication device generally includes an antenna that may be directly
accessed by a processor in the attachment for transmission of data to a
remote computer over a communication network. The attachment may also
include an input device, such as a magnetic stripe reader, smartcard
reader, barcode scanner, optical scanner, fingerprint scanner, proximity
detector, or the like. When input is received at the input device, the
input information may be sent to the attachment processor for processing
and transmission to the remote computer via the antenna. The remote
computer may process the received attachment-processed data and generate
a response to send to the device processor.