A method and apparatus are disclosed for communicating state information in an electronic message. First data representing a state of an electronic transaction is encoded, to result in creating an encoded message element that is impractical for a recipient to decode. For example, steganographic invisibility encoding may be used. The encoded message element is sent as part of a first message associated with the transaction. A second message associated with the transaction is received, and the third message includes the encoded message element. The encoded message element is decoded, to result in recovering the state of the transaction, which is used in processing the second message. As a result, large volumes of state information are sent to clients for local, transitory storage, precluding the need for a large state data store on the server side.