Fairness of exchange is a significant property for secure online transactions, and a fair exchange scheme is a useful tool for ensuring the fairness of exchanges conducted over networks. In this paper, we propose an ID-based optimistic fair exchange scheme based on the RSA function, one which is designed by combining a well-known RSA-based signature scheme and the (naive) RSA function. Note that the main contribution of this paper is to give the first provably secure ID-based fair exchange scheme based on the RSA function, whose security can be proved under fully formalized security models. Our scheme has the following additional strongpoints. The scheme is setup-free; hence, there is no registration step between a user and an arbitrator. Moreover, the proposed scheme is designed in an ID-based setting; thus, it is possible to eliminate the need for certificates and avoid some related problems.