A system of secure virtual coupons using NFC technology

Coupons are a very well established way of providing a benefit to a customer for a specific activity to improve the business (e.g. looking at an advertisement). They represent a small value, but a high number of uncontrolled copies of coupons can result in a significant loss. Compared to paper based coupons, systems of virtual coupons differ significantly by the fact that unprotected data is easily copied or modified without significant costs by anyone. In this paper, we propose a system of virtual coupons (so-called mCoupons) that is protected against illicit use. NFC in combination with inexpensive passive tags is used to prevent attacks in a decentralized approach. The paper motivates the use of NFC for such a system and gives a short list of possible attacks. The underlying protocol to prevent attacks is shortly described and the requirements for all major components of such a system are defined. From a user's perspective, the system is based on the very intuitive usability of NFC, by simply touching NFC targets with a mobile device for pick-up and cash-in of mCoupons.