The Millicent Protocol for Inexpensive Electronic Commerce

Millicent is a lightweight and secure protocol for electronic commerce over the Internet. It is designed to support purchases costing less than a cent. It is based on decentralized validation of electronic cash at the vendor's server without any additional communication, expensive encryption, or offline processing. The key innovations of Millicent are its use of brokers and of scrip. Brokers take care of account management, billing, connection maintenance, and establishing accounts with vendors. Scrip is digital cash that is only valid for a specific vendor. The vendor locally validates the scrip to prevent customer fraud, such as double spending.