Method for End to End Encryption of Payment Terms for Secure Financial Transactions

A portable hand-held device for encrypting financial transaction information, comprising:

• a housing;
• a connector;
• a processing unit within the housing;
• and
• non-volatile storage within the housing and coupled to the controller, the non-volatile storage storing a plurality of one-time use encryption keys, each key associated with a unique key identifier;
• wherein the processing unit is configured to:
• receive transaction terms comprising a customer identifier, a merchant identifier, a transaction identifier, and a transaction amount;
• generate an encrypted message using the transaction terms and one of the plurality of one-time use encryption keys, while ensuring that the one of the plurality of one-time use encryption keys has not been used previously by the device to generate an encrypted message and will not be used in the future by the device to generate an encrypted message;
• and
• transmit the encrypted message and an associated unique key identifier to another device.

A method for encrypting financial payment information, comprising;

• storing, in non-volatile storage on a first device and non-volatile storage on a third device, a plurality of one-time use encryption keys, each key associated with a unique key identifier;
• receiving, by the first device, transaction terms from a second device, the transaction terms comprising a customer identifier, a merchant identifier, a transaction identifier, and a transaction amount;
• reading one of the plurality of one-time use encryption keys from non-volatile storage in the first device;
• generating, by the first device, an encrypted message using the transaction terms and the one of the plurality of one-time use encryption keys;
• one of sending, by the first device, the encrypted message and a unique key identifier associated with the one of the plurality of one-time use encryption keys to a third device, or sending, by the first device, the encrypted message and a unique key identifier associated with the one of the plurality of one-time use encryption keys to the second device and sending, by the second device, the encrypted message and a unique key identifier associated with the one of the plurality of one-time use encryption keys to a third device;
• selecting one of the plurality of one-time use encryption keys from non-volatile storage in the third device using the unique key identifier;
• and
• decrypting, by the third device, the encrypted message using the one of the plurality of one-time use encryption keys to obtain the transaction terms.