DUET Concept

DUET (Direct Universal Electronic Transactions) is a universal platform for smart card transactions. DUET enables direct payment transactions whether in on- or offline mode without requiring authorization from a third party. 

The following paragraphs describe a complete financial cycle of the DUET Funds Transfer Concept.

Obtain Funds
Once the client card has been issued and personalized by the issuer bank, the cardholder can load purchasing power (pre-authorize the card with a certain value using PIN 1) onto the card depending on the availability of funds on his/her account (in DUET, these funds are then transferred to a „shadow“ account). This transaction can be carried out either with the help of a bank teller or by the cardholder at any online self-service terminal, ATM or over the Internet and even remotely in off-line mode.

Purchase
When the client makes a payment using a smart card at a point-of-payment terminal, the purchase amount is debited from his/her card and credited to the merchant’s card. The client’s card account balance decreases by the respective amount and the merchant’s card account balance increases accordingly. Both cards register all the details of this transaction. It is important to point out that the merchant does not need to check the customer’s solvency since the transaction would not be processed if there is not enough purchasing power on the card. The transaction is authorized when the client’s PIN 2 is keyed in.

Deposit Funds
At the end of a working day, the merchant can visit the bank or use the terminal’s modem or any other online device to transfer the accumulated funds from his/her card to his/her account. The encrypted list of transactions is transferred from the merchant card (not from the memory of the POS terminal) to the bank’s DUET card management system.

Settlement
The acquiring bank settles all the merchant’s transactions via a clearing/settlement system with the issuer banks which then transfer the money from the respective client accounts. After the merchant has transmitted the encrypted transaction list, his acquiring bank decrypts the merchant’s part of the transaction and sends the client’s part of the transaction to the issuer bank to clear the transaction(s). If both documents/certificates stand the test of comparison and contain the same information (amount of money, card number, date, etc.) the transaction will be settled. It is important to note that during all this time the real monetary resources remain at the bank’s disposal or better yet stay in the bank’s vaults (in the case when both the payer and the payee keep their money in one and the same bank).

DUET is a universally deployable system capable of handling any funds transfer scenario. Be it retail payments, micro lending, pension or welfare payments, social insurance benefits, loyalty transfers, or salary payments. DUET is a premier solution for financial or non-financial institutions, large retail chains, corporations and other corporate infrastructures, from distribution networks, to e-government or any form of e-commerce. The core feature hereby is the secure transfer of value/funds (e.g. money, loyalty points, or petrol units) for every kind of business regardless of environment and conditions, whether in online or offline mode.