smartcards

[Eric Murray]

Someone who's sending from a mailer that lne.com blocks because
of spam said:

----- Forwarded message from r00t-cypherpunks at lne.com -----

------------------------------------------------------------
[...]
> When Chaumian money comes into wide use, I think that for most
> end users we will have to stash all unused tokens inside
> smartcards.  However, because of the critical mass problem,
> initial deployment for small payments cannot rely on such
> means, though initial deployment for large payments could.

Here in Hong Kong, contactless "Octopus" smartcards (based on the Sony
FeliCa device) are well established for paying fares on buses, ferries and
subways, and also for small transactions with vending machines, convenience
stores and supermarkets. The implementation is definitely non-Chaumian (it's
based on symmetric encryption using shared secrets for both mutual
authentication and secure transfer of value) but the cards can be purchased
and reloaded with cash. Alas, the system does not allow uploads of value to
banks or peer-to-peer transfers, as Mondex did. For those who may be
interested, the standard is ISO/IEC 14443:

http://makeashorterlink.com/?O1B042DE1

The card's specs are at:

http://www.sony.net/Products/felica/pdf/833e.pdf

Reader:

http://www.sony.net/Products/felica/pdf/441e.pdf

General info:

http://www.sony.net/Products/felica/index.html

Second source:

http://www.mitsubishi.co.jp/iccard/main/3_smart/smart.html


Enzo

----- End forwarded message -----