The electronic wallet system comprises a plurality of devices interconnected through a local network and capable of conducting electronic business transaction on an open network (40). Each device contains a smart card reader. A plurality of smart cards (31-3p) represent the electronic purses of the system. One of the devices comprises an entity called the server which contains a list of purses liable to receive tokens from others purses of the system. The tokens transferred between purses are stored temporally by said server.