The E-Purse Application

Architecture Diagram of Application

How Application Works

The Card Issuer issues the smart card by putting necessary information on it, such as the public keys of the Reload Terminal and POS Terminal, the private key of the card, the initial value of the balance and the PIN number.

The EPurse application contains operations which should be performed by the card, such as authenticating PIN number, increasing and decreasing balance on the card, and so on.

The Reload Terminal increases the balance on the card according to user input. When a user inserts a card in the reload terminal, a security protocol is performed by the card and the Reload Terminal in order to authenticate each other.

The POS terminal decreases the balance on the card according to the amount of purchase to be paid by the card. The same kind of security protocol performed in the Reload Terminal is also performed by the POS terminal in order to authenticate the card.

Beyond the core reload-and-deduct cycle, the E-Purse application is built to give organizations full control over how stored value moves through their card ecosystem. Every terminal in the network, whether a Reload Terminal used for topping up balances or a POS Terminal used for accepting payment, is individually provisioned with its own key set, so a lost or compromised terminal can be revoked without affecting the rest of the deployment. Transaction logs generated at each terminal can be consolidated for reconciliation, giving administrators a clear audit trail of every reload and deduction.

The application is well suited to environments where speed and offline reliability matter more than online card processing. Because authentication and balance updates happen directly between the card and the terminal, transactions complete in a fraction of a second and do not depend on a live network connection, making it a practical fit for cashless canteens, corporate and educational campuses, factory premises, clubs, and transit systems.

Security is built into every step of the transaction: mutual authentication ensures a terminal only interacts with genuine, provisioned cards, PIN verification protects against unauthorized use if a card is lost, and encrypted key exchange prevents balance values from being tampered with in transit. This layered approach makes the E-Purse application suitable for handling real monetary value at scale. For businesses, moving to an E-Purse system reduces the cost and risk of handling physical cash, speeds up service at high-footfall points such as canteens and ticket counters, and provides usable data on spending patterns that can inform pricing, staffing and inventory decisions.

• PIN-based cardholder authentication with configurable retry limits
• Mutual authentication between card, Reload Terminal and POS Terminal
• Fast, offline-capable balance deduction at the point of sale
• Terminal-level key management for easy revocation and rollout
• Support for multiple reload channels across a single deployment
• Transaction logging for reconciliation and reporting