WHO IS IT FOR

Offline payment capability affects the entire payment ecosystem, but different actors play fundamentally different roles. Crunchfish’s governed offline payment solution is designed to support three primary operational roles:

• Central banks, payment networks, and closed-loop wallets are system operators that define rules, hold authority, and ensure system-wide integrity

• Banks and payment applications are service providers that deliver payment services to users, merchants and agents

• Users, merchants, and agents are users of services that depend on payments working when they need them

In addition, technology providers enable deployment and integration across platforms and infrastructures.

Offline payments affect each role differently. Responsibilities must remain clear.

Crunchfish strengthens the payment system as a whole by enabling offline payments without shifting roles, responsibilities, or settlement authority.

System operators

Central banks, payment systems, and closed-loop wallets

System operators are responsible for the continuity, integrity, and authority of digital money. They define system rules, govern participant behaviour, and ensure predictable outcomes across the ecosystem, especially during disruptions. For these actors, offline payment is not an application feature. It is a system-level resilience capability.

Offline payments must be designed at the system level, not by individual payment services.

Many offline approaches undermine system control. Immediate offline models move value outside the system, while traditional deferred or card-based approaches allow unbounded exposure, inconsistent behaviour, or fragmented implementations across participants. Network-specific designs further limit interoperability and complicate oversight, making offline capability difficult to govern at scale.

Crunchfish enables offline payments as a governed extension of the underlying payment system, where offline execution is controlled through secure offline wallets and receive-side coverage is ensured through system-governed offline terminals. A key scalability mechanism is the use of offline terminals as acceptance devices. These terminals allow payment systems to scale offline acceptance rapidly across users, merchants, and agents, independently of offline wallet deployment. Because offline terminals are receive-only and governed at payment-system level, they can be deployed broadly to any payee endpoint. This enables any user to receive offline payments, even if their payment application provider has not integrated offline wallet functionality. This asymmetric deployment model allows payment systems to extend offline resilience system-wide, while keeping risk controlled, behaviour predictable, and interoperability supported through shared Layer-2 protocols.

Offline capability must be governable at scale.

Service providers

Banks and payment application providers

Banks and payment application providers deliver payment services to users and merchants. They compete on experience and services, while relying on the underlying payment system for settlement, liquidity, and authority. Offline capability is increasingly expected, but building it independently is complex, risky, and difficult to scale.

Many offline approaches force application providers to take on unclear risk, manage bilateral acceptance arrangements, or accept uncertain settlement outcomes. Fragmented offline rules across networks increase operational complexity and competitive imbalance. As a result, offline capability often remains limited or avoided.

Service providers need offline capability without redefined risk or settlement.

Crunchfish provides secure offline wallets that service providers can integrate without redefining risk or settlement models. Offline spending is pre-funded through reservations held in the underlying payment system and enforced locally by offline wallets. All offline payments are verified before settlement, ensuring predictable outcomes. Because rules are governed at system level, offline payments are accepted network-wide without bilateral agreements. Service providers retain responsibility for their payment applications and customer interfaces, while settlement authority, risk ownership, and governance remain with the underlying payment system.

Users of services

Users, merchants, and agents

Users, merchants, and agents depend on payments working in everyday situations. When payments fail, trust in digital money erodes quickly and cash becomes the default fallback. They need clear expectations about whether offline payments will be accepted, settled, and final once systems recover.

During outages, users may be unable to pay, merchants may be unable to accept payments, and agents may face delayed or rejected settlements. Unclear offline limits and inconsistent behaviour across providers reduce confidence and usability.

Payment availability matters most to users, merchants, and agents.

Crunchfish enables predictable offline payments through secure offline wallets and receive-only offline terminals. Users can send offline payments through secure offline wallets and receive offline payments through offline terminals or offline wallets, within clearly defined limits. Merchants and agents can accept payments with confidence, knowing that offline transactions are verified before settlement and settled normally when availability returns. Behaviour is consistent across applications and networks, reinforcing trust.

Technology providers

Payment ecosystems rely on platforms, switches, POS systems, wallet frameworks, and infrastructure providers to deliver functionality at scale. These actors enable deployment but do not operate payment systems or assume settlement responsibility.

Technology providers enable offline capability without operating systems or services.

Offline capability is complex across heterogeneous payment rails. Network-specific designs reduce reuse, while inconsistent rules and certification requirements increase integration cost and project risk.

Crunchfish provides foundational Layer-2 offline payment technology that technology providers can integrate into their platforms. This includes an offline wallet, an offline terminal, offline backend components, and offline protocols and APIs governed by the payment system. Technology providers can reuse the same architecture across customers and rails, deploy offline capability faster, and remain aligned with regulated payment systems, without becoming payment operators.

One governed offline solution. Multiple roles. Clear responsibilities.