An offline electronic payment system based on an untraceable blind signature scheme

Abstract

This paper proposes a new offline electronic payment (e-payment) system that satisfies the major security requirements of e-payment, i.e. anonymity, unlinkability, unforgeability, double spending control, conditional traceability, and fraud prevention. The central idea is the use of Hwang et al.’s RSA-based untraceable blind signature (BS), which disables the link between the e-coin and its owner and ensures the anonymity of both the customer and the merchant. It attaches an expiration, a deposit and the transaction dates to each e-coin in order to manage the database of the bank effectively, to correctly calculate the interest on the e-coin and to aid arbitration if a dishonest customer attempts to double-spend the coin. It also ensures the anonymity of the customer as long as the coin is spent legitimately. Only when a fraudulent e-coin transaction is detected can the bank, with the help of the central authority (a trusted entity), determine the identity of the dishonest customer. The system is referred to as offline since the bank does not need to be concurrently involved in transactions between a customer and a merchant. Finally, analyses of the performance of the prototype and the primary security requirements of the proposed system are also presented.