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"Joachim Samuelsson, CEO of Crunchfish Group, presented Digital Cash security and described how Crunchfish protects against double spending. Johan Wester moderated an open forum with Chiangkai Er, CTO at V-Key, and Magnus Lagesson, CPO at Crunchfish Digital Cash as panelists."

Crunchfish and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) have entered into a Development and Demonstration Agreement for a proof-of-concept of Crunchfish Digital Cash. Crunchfish will deliver Digital Cash for iOS and Android and support CBN throughout this process. The Proof-of-concept will integrate Digital Cash into the eNaira Wallet and backend to fully evaluate the user experience in a potential commercial deployment.

"Crunchfish was a finalist for its innovation Digital Cash on non-mobile devices, in the global hackathon "HARBINGER 2021 - Innovation for Transformation", organized by RBI, the Reserve Bank of India. The overall objective of the hackathon was to identify and enable innovations with the potential to transform the digital payments landscape. Crunchfish participated for the problem statement - Non Mobile Digital Payment Solutions."

"Crunchfish Digital Cash AB ("Crunchfish") is announcing a patent-pending architecture of Digital Cash Wallets. In addition to Crunchfish's original Digital Cash Wallet offline, that is integrated in a mobile app, an architecture spanning from Core Banking Systems to Digital Cash Wallets either online or offline, in mobile apps or on non-mobile devices is presented. This provides the foundation of Crunchfish's ambition to take a global leadership position within digital payments. The Digital Cash Wallets online and in mobile apps are already ready for shipment."

"Crunchfish and IDFC FIRST Bank have now entered into a commercial license agreement. IDFC FIRST Bank have licensed both Digital Cash offline, for full offline transactions in proximity, as well as Digital Cash telecom, which enables PPI on UPI payments using the telecom network if the payer lacks internet data connectivity. Crunchfish and IDFC FIRST Bank are working closely together on integration of Digital Cash into IDFC FIRST Bank's payment apps. First release to IDFC FIRST Bank customers is planned for Q3. Initial use case will be to enable offline UPI payments using Digital Cash telecom.

"Crunchfish partner with a financial platform provider to create a Turnkey Offline Payment Solution for banks and payment services. The financial platform provider has almost 100 existing integrations with Indian banks already. Roll-out of Crunchfish Digital Cash is expected to accelerate with this turnkey solution as it may be used by any bank or payment service."

"Crunchfish Digital Cash is all about offline payments. Payers should not have to worry whether they are online or not. Payments should work regardless of banking services are down or lack of internet connectivity. This new version extends the use of Crunchfish Digital Cash even more as it becomes possible to pay anywhere using telecom connectivity, and to anyone on a domestic payment scheme. Although internet may not be present to connect online, often the telecom network is available to make a call or send an SMS."

Crunchfish in partnership with HDFC Bank and IDFC First Bank completed a joint project in the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Regulatory Sandbox to demonstrate and pilot offline retail payments. The Crunchfish platform is implemented as a trusted application that uses certified virtual secure element as well as public key infrastructure (PKI), aiming to boost adoption of digital payments in areas of no or low network by enabling transactions without the need to have a network connection. According to an RBI statement on December 11, 2023, "the solution now may be considered for adoption by regulated entities subject to compliance with applicable regulatory requirements". https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/BS_PressReleaseDisplay.aspx?prid=56911

"Crunchfish in partnership with HDFC Bank and one additional Indian bank have been working together to develop a solution for Offline Retail Payments that will be demonstrated in a pilot to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in their Regulatory Sandbox program*. The project, if successful, will provide the basis for RBI's guidance and regulatory support in providing Offline Retail Payments, based on Crunchfish Digital Cash platform, to the payment ecosystem of India. "

eCurrency and Crunchfish are partnering to offer an offline central bank digital currency (CBDC) solution. The eCurrency retail CBDC platform enables central banks to issue secure digital bearer instruments utilizing the Digital Symmetric Core Currency Cryptography (DSC3) technology and supporting tiered distribution through existing banking and fintech ecosystems. Crunchfish offers digital cash solutions where payments can be made completely offline without compromising personal privacy.

Lipis Advisors in partnership with Crunchfish published a paper that outlines the key security aspects relating to offline digital currency payments. Unlike other offline payment platforms that operate in various devices' secure elements, Crunchfish advocates a software-based approach that operates in smartphone trusted execution environments (TEEs). The need for hardware-based digital cash (e.g., on cards, wearables and feature phones) is acknowledged, but as peripheral bearers that need to be able to exchange digital cash with the smartphone as the main bearer, even in full offline-mode.

"Crunchfish have today released Digital Cash 2.2 enabling consecutive offline payments, in which the payer and payee exchange a transaction offline, and the payee can immediately spend the received funds in another offline transaction without going online. This feature may be the most desirable approach for CBDC given its resemblance to the properties of cash."

"Crunchfish has applied for a patent for a logical lock that protects against fraudulent use by cloning of Trusted Applications, which significantly enhances the security of any Trusted Applications running in hardware based as well as software based secure execution environments. For instance, double spending may occur if a clone of the Digital Cash offline Trusted Application is generated and continues to operate offline. This patent pending innovation prevents such double spending with Digital Cash offline."

Crunchfish in partnership with HDFC Bank and another Indian bank are piloting offline payments in a project monitored by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in their Regulatory Sandbox program. First phase of the pilot started during Christmas 2022, with a small-scale test during Christmas 2022. The pilot is scheduled to run for a period of four months, followed by a one-month evaluation by RBI.

"Crunchfish has applied for a Swedish patent protecting Digital Cash by combining two different data integrity schemes. First, payments are negotiated offline by short-range data communication between payer and payee communication devices using a quantum-secure cryptographic key as a shared secret. Successfully negotiated offline payments are stored locally and securely in the devices. Subsequently, payment settlement by broadband data communication is secured by signing the settlement request with another quantum secure cryptographic key."

Crunchfish and Lipis Advisors pubished a guide to offline payments design, providing insights to how offline payments relate and can interoperate with online payment system. It provides a way of categorizing offline payment solutions by three design choices which provides the payment ecosystem with a better understanding of the nuances of offline payments: -Online Payment Rail: (i) distributed ledger technology (DLT) based or (ii) centralized account-based. (The paper incorrectly labels DLT-based as token-based (see the 20xx New York Fed article on this misnomer). -Offline Security Protocol: (i) native (layer-1) or (ii) non-native (layer-2) tokens security protocol, described in relation to the underlying online payment rail. -Offline Trusted Environment: (i) hardware-based or (ii) software-based.

Crunchfish Digital Cash separates the payment process into three distinct steps - Reserve-Pay-Settle: 1. Reserve funds in a bank account and represent it as an offline balance in a Digital Cash Wallet. 2. Pay by debiting the offline balance in the Digital Cash Wallet. Offline payments are transferred using proximity interaction, e.g. QR or BLE, and are verified in a Digital Cash Verifier (for P2B transactions) or in the Digital Cash Wallet (for P2P transactions). 3. Settle Digital Cash transactions by transferring money from the payer's bank account with the reserved funds to the payee's bank account. The transfer can be initiated by both the payee and the payer, whoever gets connectivity first.

"Crunchfish Group CEO Joachim Samuelsson presented Crunchfish's pioneering Digital Cash solutions for making digital payments robust at Stora Aktiedagen Stockholm on Tuesday, March 14. Watch the presentation via this link."

Crunchfish published a paper by Lipis Advisors on the challenges of implementing offline payments on smartphones and how to mitigate the risks. Offline payments require a much higher security than what is offered by the smartphone rich execution environment (REE). This higher level of security may be achieved by implementing offline payments as a trusted application (TA) protected by a tamper-resistant element (TRE) that provides a secure runtime and storage for both cryptographic keys and other offline assets, such as the offline balance and risk rules. The TRE can be provided either as a hardware-based standalone TRE or a software-based app-integrated TRE, the trade-off being the higher security of the former versus the greater scalability of the latter.

Crunchfish has recently implemented and patented a novel approach with balance reconciliation. Private transactions are encrypted and sent to the backend, but where the keys used for the transaction are wallet keys, in contrast to prior art using public keys controlled by either the issuer or an escrow agent. In this way the payer is in full control of the privacy of their transactions even if all private transactions are sent to the online ledger encrypted. In this innovative way, regulatory requirements for transactional traceability are balanced with requirements for privacy where the payer is in full control of the encrypted transactional data for amounts below defined thresholds, defined by the issuer and the regulator. If the issuer suspects an attack by the payer, the issuer can contact the payer for permission to decrypt the data. In case the payer is not willing to grant access, the issuer may decide to lock the wallet or disallow any more private transactions.