Practical quantum tokens: challenges and perspectives
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2602.10621 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 11 Feb 2026] Title:Practical quantum tokens: challenges and perspectives Authors:Nadezhda P. Kukharchyk, Holger Boche, Christian Deppe, Kirill G. Fedorov, Martin E. Garcia, Ilja Gerhardt, Rudolf Gross, Thomas Halfmann, Hans Huebl, David Hunger, Wolfgang Kilian, Roman Kolesov, Juliane Krämer, Alexander Kubanek, Kai Müller, Boris Naydenov, Janis Nötzel, Anna P. Ovvyan, Wolfram H. P. Pernice, Gregor Pieplow, Cyril Popov, Tim Schröder, Kilian Singer, Janik Wolters View a PDF of the paper titled Practical quantum tokens: challenges and perspectives, by Nadezhda P. Kukharchyk and 22 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:The concept of quantum tokens dates back alongside quantum cryptography to Stephen Wiesner's seminal work in 1983[1]. Already this initial work proposes society-relevant applications such as secure quantum banknotes, which can be exchanged between a bank and a customer. This quantum currency is based on various physical states that can be easily verified but is protected from being copied by the fundamental quantum laws. Four decades later, these ideas have flourished in the field of quantum information, and the concept of quantum banknotes has not only adopted many varying names, such as quantum money, quantum coins, quantum-digital payments, and quantum tokens, but also reached its first experimental demonstrations. In this perspective article, we discuss the current state-of-the-art of quantum tokens in the field of quantum information, as well as their future perspectives. We present a number of physical realizations of quantum tokens with integrated quantum memories and their applicability scenarios in detail. Finally, we discuss how quantum tokens fit into the information security ecosystem and consider their relationship to post-quantum cryptography. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Applied Physics (physics.app-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2602.10621 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2602.10621v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.10621 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Nadezhda Kukharchyk [view email] [v1] Wed, 11 Feb 2026 08:11:36 UTC (15,164 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Practical quantum tokens: challenges and perspectives, by Nadezhda P. Kukharchyk and 22 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-02 Change to browse by: physics physics.app-ph References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)