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e-Wallet – THE FUTURE OF CARDS
ABSTRACT:
Using the basic concepts of Embedded Systems, an idea for changing the future of Card Cardss (Bank (Banking ing,, Petr Petro, o, Heal Health, th, Tele Televoi voice ce,, etc. etc.)) is prop propos osed ed in this this pape paper. r. Requirement of a special card reader, limited lifetime, acceptance being the main disadvantages of today’s traditional cards, led to the design of e-Wallet. The main objective of e-Wallet is to make paperless money transaction easier. The main idea behind this paper is to bring in a cheaper, more versatile and much more easily usable kind of a card. Using this e-Wallet the transaction procedure can be as simple as: the customer goes to the point of sale (POS), does the purchasing and when it comes to the payment, the customer submits his e-Wallet to vender who connects it to his termina terminall (PC).Th (PC).Thee vender vender displa displays ys the billing billing informati information on to the custom customer er who finalizes it. The amount in the e-Wallet is updated accordingly. Later at periodic intervals, the vender intimates the bank (in case of credit cards) which transfers the amount from the customer’(s) account to his. The advantages of e-Wallet are its ease of use (doesn’t require a separate card reader), ease of maintenance, flexibility, safety, being the primary ones. The designing of the card is similar to any other embedded card. The designing cost of the card (e-Wallet) being as low as the price of a pizza. pizza. There There are ample enhancem enhancements ents to this this applica applicatio tion n from from credit credit cards cards to televoice televoice cards. cards. Unlike Unlike tradit traditiona ionall cards cards which which are applic applicati ation on oriente oriented, d, all the applications’ software can be embedded into this e-Wallet which provides multifunctionality.
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1. INTRODUCTION: INTRODUCTION: With the advent of computers many technologies are taking this world by a surprise. surprise. These include Embedded Embedded Systems Systems (ES), Artificial Intelligence Intelligence (AI), Neural Networks (NN), Fuzzy Logic, Bluetooth and many more are upcoming. This paper deals with Embedded Systems in a new perspective.
In easy easy term terms, s, Embe Embedde dded d Syst System emss can can be viewe viewed d as a combi combinat natio ion n of hardware and software components, in which the software is implanted into the hardware to do the specific job. These ES were implemented in various fields from Battery chargers to Aviation Systems besides Cell phones (GSM, GPRS, CDMA, etc.). These ES are being developed in ‘leaps and bounds’. The never-ending efforts of many scientists in the field of ES led to the evolution of Smart Technology (ST).
The main objective of e-Wallet is to make paperless money transaction easier. The electronic wallet (e-Wallet ) is just like a leather wallet as it does the same, in terms of e-cash. In today’s life where monetary value and security both, go hand in hand, it is difficult to satisfy customers using the routine cards. The main idea behind this paper is to bring in a cheaper, more versatile and much more easily usable kind of a card.
Using the basic concept of ES, an idea for changing the future of Cards (Banking, Petro, Health etc.) is proposed in this paper. To interpret this idea, it is first needed to know the pros & cons of today’s ‘traditional’ cards. . Consider the example of banking, The magnetic magnetic stripe cards used for transactions transactions are as simple simple as visiting cards, with a magnetic tape to hold the information
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The basic advantages of these cards are: •
Ease of mobility
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Ease of use
Coming to the disadvantages of these cards, few are listed here under:
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Easy Duplication
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Requires a special card reader
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Networking problems
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No memory to hold the current balance
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Limited lifetime No particular user authentication
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Unsecured remote transaction
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Limited acceptance
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Vulnerable to moisture, heat, dirt etc.
and the list goes on……
Keeping these pros & cons in view, the Smart Technology is introduced to develop a new class of cards. This stream of Smart Technology can be termed as Smart Card Technology (SCT). This smart card has a microprocessor or memory chip embedded in it that, when coupled with a reader, has the processing power to serve many different applications. Such cards can be referred to as Wallet).
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e-Wallet (electronic
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2. What is a e-Wallet? A e-Wallet(digital wallet) is a software component that allows a user to make an electronic payment with a financial instrument (such as a credit card or a digital coin), and hides the low-level details of executing the payment protocol that is used to make the payment.
A e- Wallet functions much like a physical wallet. The digital wallet was first conceived as a method of storing various forms of electronic money (e-cash), but with little popularity of such e-cash services, the digital wallet has evolved into a service that provides internet users with a convenient way to store and use online shopping information
3. Transaction Procedure:
The e-Wallet cardholder goes to a point of sale (POS) location where the eWallet is accepted. Having chosen the goods he wishes to buy, he goes to the cash desk. Here, the merchant calculates the total value and enters it on the payment terminal using a keypad. The terminal then displays the amount on a small screen facing the cardholder, who confirms the amount by pressing an "OK" button. In less than a second, the value is transferred from the e-Wallet to the terminal, and the value remaining in the e-Wallet is adjusted. This is an off-line transaction. A message is displayed to both the cardholder and the merchant saying that the payment has been accepted.
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Periodically, the merchant connects the terminal to his bank to do a collection that is to transfer the value collected in the terminal to his bank account. This is an on-line transaction. The terminal sends a message for each transaction to the e-Wallet host system, identifying the card number and issuer and the amount. The host system debits the float account of the issuer and credits the merchant's account. This typically takes a few seconds per transaction.
Merchants can program their terminals to automatically do collections each day, week or month, or when a specified value of transactions is reached. If merchants have a number of terminals (e.g. a vending machine operator, or a large supermarket) then they can use the "shuttle collection" system, where terminals download their data onto a special collection card, which in turn then downloads it into a central terminal, which is then used to perform an on-line collection.
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4. Wallet Architecture:
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Figure1: e-Wallet architecture
Brief description of the core components of e-wallet is as follows:
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4.1 Instrument manager:
It manages all of the instrument instances contained in the wallet, and, for example, may be queried to determine which instrument classes and instances are available to execute a given payment or other operation. 4.2 Protocol manager:
The Protocol Manager manages all of the protocols that the wallet may use to accomplish various operations, and invokes protocols to carry out the interaction between the digital wallet and the vendors and banks. The Protocol Manager relies on the Communication Manager to process low-level communications requests with other computers representing banks and vendors.
4.3 Wallet controller:
The Wallet Controller presents a consolidated interface for the wallet to the client. The Wallet Controller hides the complexity of the other components of the wallet, and provides a high-level interface to the client. A non-human client, or software agent, can make method calls on the Wallet Controllers interface through the Client API. A human client may use a graphical user interface (GUI) which may make method calls on the Wallet Controller. The Wallet Controller coordinates the series of interactions between the User Profile Manager, Instrument Manager, and Protocol Manager necessary to carry out high-level requests received from the client, such as purchase a product.
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4.4 User profile manager:
The User Profile Manager manages information about clients and groups of clients of the wallet including their user names, passwords, ship-to and bill-to addresses, and potentially other user profile information as well. In addition, the User Profile Manager keeps access control information about what financial instruments each user has the authority to access. 4.5 Communication manager:
The Communication Manager provides the wallet with an interface to send and receive string messages between wallets and peer commerce components by setting up a connection with a remote Communication Manager. The Protocol Manager builds on top of the connection abstraction to support the concept of a session. A connection is typically asynchronous, while communications between peer commerce components in a Session occur in (message,response) pairs where one peer sends a message, the other peer receives the message, executes some action, and returns a response. Depending upon the implementation of the Communication Manager, the messages may be sent over different types of networks using different communication protocols. For example, one implementation of a Communication Manager may send and receive messages over the Internet using HTTP requests and responses over a TCP/IP ethernet network. In this case, a Session may be made up of a sequence of several HTTP GET messages and their corresponding responses. In another example, a second implementation of a Communication Manager may send and receive messages
over
a
RS232
serial
interface
using
TCP/IP.
Note that the Protocol Manager is responsible for making calls to the Cryptographic Engine to encrypt any data that is passed to the Communication Manager, such that
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the data can be securely transmitted over the communications medium. The Communication Manager cannot be responsible for encryption of sensitive data from the wallet because it is formally outside the wallet architecture, and can be replaced by another Communication Manager to run the wallet on another device. If the Communication Manager is relied upon to encrypt sensitive data, then the Communication Manager might be replaced with a malicious Communication Manager that sends all sensitive data to an adversary.
4.6 Client API:
The Client API is an interface provided by the Wallet Controller that may be used by an autonomous software agent acting on behalf of a human user. 4.7 User Interface:
The User Interface provides a graphical interface to the services offered by the Wallet Controllers interface. The User Interface is an optional component of the wallet. Some devices, such as most smart cards, do not have the ability to display a graphical user interface, and hence the Wallet Controller interface must be accessed through the Client API. Note that the user interface is a core component within the wallet because certain parts of the user interface have access to sensitive user data. For example, the edit box object into which a user enters the password to unlock the wallet should run within the wallets protected address space. On the other hand, users may want to customize the wallets interface by plugging-in GUIs developed by other software vendors. To accomplish both these conflicting goals, the user interface exports parts of its interface as the User Interface API that may be overloaded by software vendors to render customized parts of the interface
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5. CHARACTERISTICS:
5.1 Extensible:
A wallet is able to accommodate all of the users different payment instruments, and inter-operate with multiple payment protocols. For example, a digital wallet is able to hold a users credit cards and digital coins, and be able to make payments with either of them, perhaps using SET in the case of the credit card, and by using a digital coin payment protocol in the latter case. As banks and vendors develop new financial instruments, a digital wallet should be capable of holding new financial instruments and make payments with these instruments. For instance, vendors are able to develop electronic coupons that offer discounts on products without requiring that users install a new wallet to hold these coupons and make payments with them.
5.2 Client-Driven:
The interaction between the wallet and the vendor, is driven by the client (i.e., the customer). Vendors are not capable of invoking the clients e-wallet to do anything that the end-user may resent or consider an annoyance. For example, a vendor is not able to automatically launch a clients e-wallet application every time
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the user visits a web page that offers the opportunity to buy a product. Imagine what life would be like if, simply by walking into someones store, the store owner had the right to reach into your pocket, pull out your wallet, hold it in front of you, and ask you if you wanted to buy something from him! A client-driven approach for building a digital wallet is important because software which customers consider intrusive will hinder the success of electronic commerce for all participants involved. 5.3 Symmetric:
Vendors and banks run software analogous to wallets, which manage their end of the financial operations. Since the functionality is so similar, it makes sense to re-use, whenever possible, the same infrastructure and interfaces within wallets, vendors, and banks. For example, the component that manages financial instruments (recording for instance account balances, authorized uses) can be shared across these different participants in the financial operations. If the wallet components that are reused are extensible, then we automatically get extensibility at the bank or vendor. So, for instance, an extensible instrument manager will allow the bank or vendor to easily use new instruments as they become available. 5.4 Generalized:
Interfaces should be similar regardless of what type of device or computer that the wallet, bank, or vendor application is running on. A digital wallet running on an alternative device, such as a personal digital assistant (PDA) or a smart card, for example, has substantial functionality in common with a digital wallet built as an extension to a web browser. Thus, a digital wallet in these two environments should re-use the same instrument and protocol management interfaces.
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6.TECHNOLOGY:
A e-wallet has both a software and information component. The software provides security and encryption for the personal information and for the actual transaction. Typically, digital wallets are stored on theclient side and are easily selfmaintained and fully compatible with most e-commerce Web sites. A serverside digital wallet, also known as a thin wallet, is one that an organization creates for and about you and maintains on its servers. Server-side digital wallets are gaining popularity among major retailers due to the security, efficiency, and added utility it provides to the end-user, methods (including credit card numbers, expiry dates, and security numbers), and other which increases their enjoyment of their overall purchase. The information component is basically adatabase of user-inputted information. This information consists of your shipping address, billing address, payment information
7. Card Designing:
7.1 Application Specific Integrated Circuit:
Most of the home friendly electronic oriented products works on custom specified integrated circuit chips like electric oven, cellular phones, washing machines etc. Following this global trend we are using FIELD PROGRAMABLE GATE ARRAY (FPGA) belonging to the family of APPLICATION SPECIFIC INTEGRATED CIRCUIT
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7.2 Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA):
FPGA is widely used in all consumer electronic devices because of its low cost and better reliability. It can be easily programmed by the end user and used in any applications. FPGA can be broadly classified into two types: 1.Custom designed IC 2.General purpose IC
Custom design FPGA’s are developed by user specification from wafer level and final output is obtained. It is only suitable for mass production systems with unique programming .
general purpose FPGA’s which were supplied by the vendor in IC form where the user has to program to his requirements with the help of EDA tools (electronic device automation).
8. INTERNAL BLOCKS OF FPGA IC:
Embedded Microcontroller:
The embedded microcontroller used here is ATMEL AT40K. It has the overall system control and it interprets the encryption algorithm. A dedicated logic is used for security measures such as personal identification number (pin) authentication or challenge response. The voltage level is: VCC= 1.8 +/- 0.15V.
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Crypto Coprocessor:
This is a custom designed unit (Modular Exponential unit) to implement encryption algorithm. Inside, it has a ROM to store the password used. It runs independent of the microcontroller unit and it minimizes the delay in data encryption and decryption. By using a crypto-coprocessor, the password in encrypted and stored and it would be almost impossible for a hacker to crack the password.
Random Word Generator:
The random word generator unit generates a random word which replaces the password (correct password) in the buffers and other terminals with a random word after the transaction is over. Hence it is almost impossible to replicate the behavior of the ASIC and thereby obtain the encryption key or algorithm used.
On Chip Security Power Management:
This unit protects the card (ASIC) against over voltage or under voltage and over frequency or under frequency of the clock signals given for operation.
Access Control:
Access control unit protects the on chip memory. It provides address and data bus scrambling and detects any non-standard attempt to acquire memory access.
Flash ROM / ROM:
Flash ROM stores the instruction set for the microcontroller unit, the necessary monitor routine programs and the application code. Here the flash ROM is used because there are 32 available instructions sets for different applications. But
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only one instruction set is used. If another instruction set is used the card can be used for only the specific application.
EEPROM:
EEPROM is used to store the processed data i.e. the balance amount in the card. This part is of commercial importance as it holds the monetary information of the card. Also the EEPROM sends the data to be read for establishing transaction.
RAM:
It provides the workspace for both the microcontroller unit and the crypto co-processor. It’s where the actual comparison of the stored password (original password) and the given password for transaction to take place. Only if the given password is the actual password, the access is given to view the details of the card, deposition, withdrawal are allowed.
Serial Interface:
It has six valid pins CS-chip select, CLK-external clock, DI-data input, D0data input, VOC-voltage input, GND-ground. Actually a parallel printer port is used for interface of the card with PC. But only the six required pins of the printer ports are activated. Thus the advantages of parallel and serial communication are utilized. There is no need for a separate USB.
RF Interface:
This unit provides establishment of transaction using Blue tooth technology, which is our future enhancement.
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9. Internal 16 Bit Address/Data Bus: This provides communication between different units inside ASIC chip. This ASIC chip is built satisfying ISO 7816 standards.
Operation:
1. Once the card is given the power supply all the units are activated. 2. The password is sought and the password is sent. The first bit is chip select then the start bit, two opcode bits, 6-address bits and 16 data bits.The dedicated embedded microcontroller looks after this process. 3. Then the given password is sent to the RAM work space. 4. The password (original password) after decryption by the crypto processor is sent to the RAM. 5. Here the passwords are compared by the microcontroller. Only if the both the passwords are correct, the access control unit brings the flash ROM, EEPROM units of low impedance state. 6. Otherwise the units are kept in high impedance state. 7. The on-chip security power management unit provides the correct voltage and correct frequency (CLK signal) for functioning of the ASIC. 8. If the password is correct, then the microcontroller fetches the instructions from the instruction set in the FLASH ROM. 9. The balance amount can be fetched form the EEPROM, through the D0 pin of the serial interface. 10. After the transaction is over the balance amount is stored in the EEPROM through D1 pin of the serial interface.
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11. Once the transaction is over, the random word generator generates a random word and sends it to the terminal ends and other buffers where the original password is present. This protects the original password from being hacked by hackers. 12. Thus the ASIC is designed for effective transaction with proper security to the customers.
10. SALIENT FEATURES OF e-WALLET:
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More than 40 years of data retention
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Firewall encrypted security logic,its level of security is also impressive
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Compatible with many supporting hardware.
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No separate card reader is required to access our card
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Polarity reversal indicator is pre-built in our card.
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Reusability of our card is unlimited.
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Multiple card features are incorporated in the same card.
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External complexities are less.
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Whatever information you want to keep safe, eWallet is designed to help you entering and retrieving your data with the least hassle possible
10.1 Encryption:
To store personal information using a digital wallet requires the use of encryption technology. This is where all information is securely transferred to the merchant so that someone's personal information is not compromised.
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10.2 Digital Certificate :
To effectively identify everyone, each digital wallet will provide consumers with a digital certificate. This allows a consumer to visit different websites without having to re-enter their credit card information because the digital certificate stores all required information.
11. SETUP AND USE: A client side digital wallet requires minimal setup and is relatively easy to use. Once the software is installed, the user begins by entering all the pertinent information. The digital wallet is now setup. At the purchase/check-out page of an ecommerce site, the digital wallet software has the ability to automatically enter the user information in the online form. By default, most digital wallets prompt when the software recognizes a form in which it can fill out, if you chose to automatically fill out the form, you will be prompted for a password. This keeps unauthorized users from viewing personal information stored on a particular computer.
12. MEMORY AID:
None:
This option will generate the most secure password but at the expense of being harder to remember.
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Mnemonic Sentence :
With this option, Pass Builder will also generate a sentence that Could help you to remember the password. For example, if Pass Builder generates the Password Bni, it would show you the mnemonic sentence was Brian nibbled icons. Any Numbers or Punctuation will be added to the end of the sentence. When selecting this option, you will also be presented with two additional buttons: the Copy to Clipboard button will copy the mnemonic sentence to the clipboard for your use in other software and the Append To Card Note button will add the mnemonic sentence to the end of your card notes.
Pronounceable :
The Pronounceable option is based on the U.S. governments FIPS 181 specifications for creating pronounceable passwords. The key advantage is that a Pronunciation Aid will be displayed that uses syllables to help you remember your password. Any Numbers or Punctuation will be prepended and/or appended to the Password.
Dictionary :
The Dictionary option starts with a word from a built-in dictionary. Additional characters are then mixed into the password to fill it out to the requested Length.If the Warped option is checked, certain characters will be changed so the password is still readable, but it would be harder for someone to guess. For example, an a might be changed to an @ and a s might be changed to a 5 or a z.
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13. Advantages of e-Wallet: Ease of use:
Withdraw or deposit value by telephone No signature required
Pay the exact amount, no fiddling for change
Immediate payment
Accessibility and convenience:
Cash machines and telephones give more access points to funds in bank account
Available 24 hours / 365 days
Cash machines and telephones cannot run out of electronic cash.
Flexibility:
Transfer value by telephone
Pay person to person
For low or high values
Multi-currency capability
No age limit, so suitable for all the family
Safety and control:
Spend only what you have
Read your balance
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Load value at home
Lock your card or wallet
Keep track of what you have spent and where
Customer is traceable if a lost card is found.
14. Conclusion: With all the above mentioned features it is definite that the future of cards is definitely
e-Wallet ’ s.
Besides credit cards, this e-Wallet can also be extended into the
following fields, namely: •
Sim – card
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Petro – card
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Credit – card
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Health – card
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Intelligent web – surfing card
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Insurance – card
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Access – card
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ATM
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Televoice card
These are only the few to mention. Due to its ease of adaptability to its environment, this e-Wallet would certainly change the way people transact (monetary transactions).
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REFERENCE:
1. www.technologyreview.com
2. www.wikipedia.com
3. http://www.publicradio.org
4. http://futureexplorers.com
5. www.entecollege.com
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