The present invention relates to a method for verifying an anonymous
payment by a defined party in a communication system providing a public
key infrastructure. The method comprising the steps of (a) receiving a
validation message from a merchant party, the validation message
comprising a proof signature produced by a customer party and an
encrypted payment message, the proof signature being derived from a
customer secret key, a customer certificate, at least one customer
attribute, and the encrypted payment message; (b) verifying the validity
of the proof signature based on an issuing public key, a verification
public key, and the encrypted payment message; (c) decrypting at least
part of the encrypted payment message based on a verification secret key
corresponding to the verification public key, thereby obtaining a
customer information related to the at least one customer attribute. In
the event of the validity of the proof signature (d) the obtained
customer information is used for initializing the authorization of the
payment.