Automatic Teller Machines for Offline E-cash
Abstract
Electronic cash (e-cash) is a digital alternative to physical currency that allows anonymous transactions between users and merchants. Typically, coins in an e-cash scheme are only dispensed through a central bank. A drawback of this approach is that the bank is always on the critical path during withdrawals, and if a reliable connection to the bank is temporarily unavailable, users may be unable to withdraw coins in a timely fashion. As with physical currency, there are benefits to supporting a decentralized infrastructure where withdrawals can be performed without involving the bank in the critical path. We propose the design of a new cryptographic bearer token that can be dispensed by automatic teller machines (ATM) in a fully offline e-cash scheme. Such bearer tokens provide anonymity, unforgeability and untraceability, i.e., users cannot be tracked by their spending activities or the locations of withdrawal. We formalize the requirements of an e-cash scheme with multiple issuers and propose an efficient design building on top of the compact e-cash protocol of Camenisch et al. (EUROCRYPT 2005). Our construction leverages an unforgeable and doubly-anonymous voucher that allows a one-time transfer of coins between an ATM and a user, while hiding their identities from parties not involved in the transaction.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2604.10380,
title = {Automatic Teller Machines for Offline E-cash},
author = {Anrin Chakraborti and Qingzhao Zhang and Jingjia Peng and Morley Mao and Michael K. Reiter},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.10380},
year = {2026}
}