A system, method, and apparatus for enabling a thin client to participate in a global transaction in a distributed object-oriented transaction processing environment that commits resources according to a two-phased commit protocol. The thin client is configured with a pseudo-transaction manager (PTM), and a remote server managing the commit procedure is configured with an object transaction manager having an interface to the (PTM). When an application on the thin client sends a request to begin a transaction, the PTM creates a temporary propagation context including a Global ID identifying the transaction and sets a flag in the context to indicate that this is a new transaction. The context is sent to a remote server for execution of a remote method. Upon receipt, the remote server recognizes that this is a new transaction and creates a real propagation context including its Resource Coordinator Proxy ID, the global ID, and a Recovery Coordinator Name useful for a recovery process in the event of transaction failure. The real context is replied to the PTM, which updates and replaces its temporary context with the real context. The real context is then sent to any downstream remote server participating in the global transaction, and each (Subordinate) registers to the Resource Coordinator identified in the context. The real context containing the Global ID generated by the thin client is used by the PTM for requests to any servers involved in the transaction, while the remote server manages the two-phase commit procedure.