Japanese payments network JCB has demonstrated a machine-to-machine payments infrastructure that enables merchants to conditionally accept NFC payments even when both purchaser and merchant are offline.

The infrastructure uses NFC, blockchain and self-sovereign identity technology to implement a payment processing system for use with internet of things (IoT) devices, smartphones, wearables and other devices.

JCB developed it in partnership with Singapore-based blockchain provider Keychain as “the first payment infrastructure for machine-to-machine transactions that supports offline payments using NFC”.

“Leveraging Keychain’s blockchain and self-sovereign identity technology, the system addresses challenges related to the risks of operating through network outages and distributed attacks,” the companies say.

“Under the collaboration with JCB, Keychain implemented the payment processing system using IoT devices, mobile phones and smart watches, and demonstrated the following:

“1 Payments may be conditionally processed even during a double-offline scenario.

“2 Payment processing consensus may be done over mixed networks simultaneously.

“3 Upon network restoration, the offline transactions may be securely repatriated to online in batches.

“The system uses NFC network protocol and leverages Keychain Core to support small IoT devices with, in principle, as little as 32Mb of memory.”

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