Independently, Ben Reddy, also an entrepreneur, had the same idea and worked with Jason Richelson to write and file a similar patent in April 1999.
Part of the card number together with the transaction details and timestamp was then digitally signed by that window (using InternetCash's hardware encryption devices) and then sent back to the merchant for storage and reference.
This two-stage approach allowed full flexibility on the deployment of the "InternetCash Payment Window", which was effectively providing the payment security to the system, so it could be run on separate servers than the actual "banking" system, which maintained the card balances and performed the transactions.
In addition to building its own secure Internet-based payment network, InternetCash utilized hardware encryption devices from nCipher (acquired by Thales on July 11, 2008[9]) combined with custom code for generating its card numbers.
InternetCash card generation used secret sharing techniques, requiring a quorum of authorized company Officers present when the cash was minted.