In the fall of 1996 there was widespread interest in alternative payment schemes, particularly in the emerging
internet marketplace. The Mondex electronic purse appeared to have considerable potential as an engine of
electronic commerce. It might also transform traditional cash payments.
The purse was a smart card alternative to cash. With 90% of worldwide payments paid in cash, a majority of
which were under $10, cash remained a popular payment alternative. While the credit card or debit card
involved money being leant by the financial institution or retrieved from an account -- the Mondex purse, a
self-standing value store, required no remote approval of individual transactions. Rather, Mondex value
equivalent to cash was stored in the card's microchip as were secure programs for manipulating that value
and for interfacing with other Mondex cards or terminals. Thus, a customer could provide his or her card to a
merchant's point of sale device and authorize transferal of a certain amount of value (see Exhibit 1). That
amount would then be electronically deducted from the chip inside the customer's card and added to the
amount on the retailer's chip. All this was accomplished without accessing the customer's bank balance or
checking his or her credit worthiness.