Malmö, April 17th, 2026.
Crunchfish AB today announces that the Indian Patent Office has issued a Decision to Grant for its core patent application covering governed offline payments. The patent, IN587081, protects Crunchfish's foundational architecture for enabling resilient digital payments without continuous system availability in India and is valid for 20 years from its original filing in January 2020.
India is at the forefront of global payments innovation, with its UPI infrastructure processing more than 20 billion real-time transactions per month, comparable to the rest of the world combined. In addition, India operates a leading national card scheme and is among the most advanced globally in Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) implementation through the Digital Rupee.
Crunchfish has been actively engaged in the Indian market since 2020 and is currently collaborating with National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to enable vendor-neutral offline acceptance for the Digital Rupee, positioning the Company at the centre of India's next phase of payment infrastructure development.
The granted patent secures Crunchfish's position both:
- Domestically in India, by protecting the use of governed offline payments within the Indian market
- Internationally from India, by preventing Indian entities from exporting similar governed offline solutions globally
This milestone follows earlier grants of the same foundational invention in the United States, Europe (validated in 22 countries), and Taiwan, with the patent pending in China. It further strengthens Crunchfish's strong intellectual property portfolio, which spans 22 patent families across multiple jurisdictions, covering both payment-specific and application-generic innovations.
The patented technology enables a new payment architecture where transactions can be executed independently of continuous system availability, while maintaining control of digital money and eliminating settlement credit risk. The original invention was first disclosed at the end of January 2020, when Crunchfish announced its capability to enable offline, frictionless mobile payments, laying the foundation for what has since evolved into its governed offline architecture.
"Receiving this patent grant in India is strategically highly significant. India is not only one of the largest payment markets in the world, it is also leading the global transition toward resilient digital payment infrastructure. This strengthens our commercial position at a time when offline capability is becoming a requirement rather than an option," says Joachim Samuelsson, CEO of Crunchfish.
For more information, please contact:
Joachim Samuelsson, CEO of Crunchfish AB
+46 708 46 47 88
joachim.samuelsson@crunchfish.com
This information is Crunchfish AB obliged to publish in accordance with the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was provided by the above for publication on 17th April 2026 at 11:30 CEST.
Västra Hamnen Corporate Finance AB is the Certified Adviser. Email: ca@vhcorp.se. Telephone +46 40 200 250.
About Crunchfish - crunchfish.com
Crunchfish is a deep fintech company developing patented governed offline payments technology for payment systems, banks, and payment applications. Its reservation-based Layer-2 architecture enables offline payments to operate as digital money, preserving central ledger authority, bounded exposure, and liquidity anchored within regulated institutions. By structurally aligning banking economics, scalable deployment, and governance continuity, Crunchfish enables offline capability at institutional scale without creating parallel forms of money or unmanaged credit risk. Crunchfish is listed on the Nasdaq First North Growth Market.
