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Application US20050171903
Published 2005-08-04
System And Method For Flexible Micropayment Of Low Value Electronic Assets
An electronic asset system mints a stick of electronic assets that can be spent by the user with multiple vendors. Assets sticks are issued anonymously or non-anonymously in a way without requiring dedication to a particular vendor, hence allowing the user to spend one or more assets from the stick with different vendors. The auditor randomly audit samples of the spent assets to detect whether the assets have been fraudulently used. The electronic asset system employs tamper-resistant electronic wallets constructed as dedicated hardware devices, or as devices with secure-processor architecture. The electronic asset system also facilitates handling of electronic coupons in a manner that enforces compliance between the user and the vendor. The user and vendor each maintain a stick of corresponding coupons with pointers to the most recent and oldest coupons available for expenditure. When a coupon is used or granted, the user and vendor both update the appropriate pointer to their respective sticks and then exchange signed data describing placement of the pointer to verify a correspondence between the referenced coupons.
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- 1. A computer readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing steps comprising:
minting a stick of electronic assets by digitally signing with an issuer's signature a composite of user-provided data items including a user identity, a bottom asset from a bottom of the stick, and a length of the stick; spending one or more assets from the stick at one or more vendors, wherein each expenditure with a particular vendor involves digitally signing with a user's signature a first asset from the stick to be spent and passing the user-signed first asset along with the issuer-signed composite to the particular vendor for verification and subsequently passing any additional assets to be spent without user signature to the particular vendor; and depositing one or more assets collected by the particular vendor by digitally signing with the particular vendor's signature a composite of data items including the user-signed first asset and a last asset spent by the user from the stick and passing the vendor-signed composite along with the issuer-signed composite to the issuer.
- 9. A computer comprising a:
a memory that stores an operating system; and a central processing unit running the operating system and configured to perform the steps of:
forming a stick of L electronic assets Ci (for i=1, . . . , L) where each asset can be derived from a preceding asset in the stick;
signing the stick with a signature of a party issuing the assets;
spending a first run of one or more assets from the stick at a first vendor; and
spending a second run of one or more assets from the stick at a second vendor.
- 17. A computer readable medium having computer-executable instructions for performing steps comprising:
creating, at a user, a stick of L electronic assets by computing:
Ci=hi(x) (for i=1, . . . , L)
where h(x) is a hashing function of a value x; submitting a withdrawal request from the user to an issuer, the withdrawal request having a user identity U, a last asset value CL taken from a bottom of the stick, and the value L, while omitting any vendor identity; signing, at the issuer, the withdrawal request; and returning the signed withdrawal request to the user.
