Electronic Money, or E-Money, and Digital Cash


"The money screamed across the wires, its provenance fading in a maze of electronic transfers, which shifted it, hid it, broke it up into manageable wads which would be withdrawn and redeposited elsewhere, obliterating the trail."

Nest of Vipers, a banking thriller
by Linda Davies.

Money was originally a physical substance like gold and silver. It could even be alive - cattle were one of the oldest forms of money. Today, although much of the money used by individuals in their everyday transactions is still in the form of notes and coins, its quantity is small in comparison with the intangible money that exists only as entries in bank records. Perhaps coins and banknotes will become as obsolete as cowrie shells.

A major change in the nature of money would have significant unintended consequences. The advantages for criminals and tax evaders could be considerable, as illustrated by the quotation on the right. How can we maximize the benefits to society while reducing the risks?


E-Money Questions and Answers

E-Money FAQ.
Frequently asked questions (and answers) about e-money, compiled by Jim Miller.
 
Smart Card FAQ
Answers to common questions provided by the Smart Card Alliance
 
Smart Cards FAQ
A Frequently Asked Questions list for the newsgroup alt.technology.smartcards.
 

Payment Systems and Organisations

Apple Pay
Apple Pay is a contactless payment system that can be used with an iPhone, Apple Watch, or iPad to make payments in a simple, secure, and private way.
 
Android Pay
Android Pay is a contactless payment system for smart phones using the Android operation system.
 
Paym Mobile Payments
The official website of the organisation behind the Paym system of making payments with mobile phones.
 
Paym Council: Paym Overview
The Payments Council has been working with participating UK banks and building societies to develop a secure new way to pay using a mobile phone number.
 
Paym promises mobile-to-mobile current account payments
Swift and easy, nine out of 10 UK current accounts will be eligible by the end of the year, says Payment Council. Guardian, 10 March 2014.
 
SpaceBIT
A new crypto currency designed to support space exploration with crypto-equity using "Swarm - Real" crowd-funding. It was launched on 11th July 2014.
 
What is blockchain? 10 experts attempt to explain blockchain in 150 words or less
Blockchain is being touted around the world as a disruptive technology that could revolutionise finance, trade, legal systems, digital media, and much more, but what exactly is it. Ten experts from around the world give their own brief explanations. There is also a short explanatory video on the same page.
 
What Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Means for Gold Investors new!
After an explanation of the basic ideas behind cryptocurrencies and bitcoin the article points out that Gold and crypto are polar opposites in many ways. Crypto is volatile, gold is a safe haven. Gold is long term security and storage of wealth. However buyers like Bitcoins because of its decentralized nature and the privacy of holding it in an encrypted wallet and therefore demand for bitcoin has weighed negatively on gold demand.
 
When Bitcoin Grows Up by John Lanchester.
A personal account of what can go wrong with savings in the form of a virtual currency.
 
Missing: hard drive containing Bitcoins worth £4m in Newport landfill site.
Buried somewhere under four feet of mud and rubbish, in the Docksway landfill site near Newport, Wales, in a space about the size of a football pitch is a computer hard drive worth more than £4m. It belonged to James Howells, who found it in a drawer and put it in a bin. Later he realised that it held a digital wallet with 7,500 Bitcoins created for almost nothing in 2009 - and then worth about the same.
 
"I Forget My PIN: An Epic Tale OF Losing $30,000 In Bitcoin.
An article about the longer term implications of cryptocurrencies.
 
Do you know your Litecoin from your Dogecoin?
An article about alternatives to Bitcoin. Daily Mail, 3 March 2014.
 
Meet Darkcoin - Bitcoin's Shadowy Cousin
Cryptocurrencies have become notorious as a way to buy weapons and drugs online - now Darkcoin promises complete anonymity. Sky News, 22 May 2014.
 
Bitcoin's Technology May Revolutionize Finance, Says BOE
The Bank of England published a new paper on digital currencies in which it is argued that the key innovation of bitcoin and other digital currencies is the technology behind it and not necessarily the currency itself. The "distributed ledger" which allows a payment system to operate in an entirely decentralised way, without intermediaries such as banks.
 
Digital currencies: how do they work and what makes them different? - Quarterly Bulletin article
A Youtube video made by the Bank of England.
 
The Mt Gox bitcoin scandal is the best thing to happen to bitcoin in years
After its biggest exchange's collapse, Bitcoin could shed its shady reputation and start anew as believable currency. Guardian, 26 February 2014.
 
Mt. Gox Bitcoin Exchange Down Amid $365 Million Theft Claim
Mt. Gox, the Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange that halted withdrawals this month, went offline as a document surfaced alleging long-term theft of about $365 million in the digital currency. Bloomberg, February 25, 2014.
 
In London, the next wave of Bitcoin growth will be led by startups and innovation
Bitcoin-focused entrepreneurs will be the ones using innovation to turn Bitcoin from a controversial experimental currency into a powerful financial game-changer - and many of those innovations could come out of London, according to Katie Fehrenbacher. 5 July 2013.
 
Should you trust Bitcoin? It depends what you think it's for
Risking money with an unknown, unregulated technology might seem mad. But that's exactly what the growing community of virtual currency Bitcoin users are doing. Guardian, 5 July 2013.
 
Winklevoss twins back bitcoin as bubble bursts
Bitcoin has received its most high-profile endorsement yet as the Winklevoss twins, famous for their legal battle with Facebook, reveal they could be the largest holders of the controversial digital currency - just as the bubble bursts and the price plummets. Telegraph, 12 April 2013/
 
Bitcoin: An open source P2P digital currency
The official site offering documentation, forums and the open source client software which permits to send and receive bitcoins.
 
New Money Laundering Guidelines Are A Positive Sign For Bitcoin
An opinion piece by Timothy B. Lee who argues that FinCEN's guidance is probably the best Bitcoin fans could have hoped for: it sends a clear sign that America's anti-money laundering regulators do not consider the currency a threat and isn't going to try to force it to change or shut down.
 
Bitcoin virtual currency to come to cash-strapped Cyprus via ATM
As the Cypriot financial crisis continues, some are seeing a new opportunity for the popular Internet crypto-currency Bitcoin to gain broader acceptance.
 
Jeff Berwick Announces Opening Of First Bitcoin ATM in Cyprus
Jeff Berwick, founder of StockHouse.com and CEO of TDV Media, announced Monday his plans to open the world's first Bitcoin ATM in Cyprus, citing the ongoing bank bailout, bank closures and capital controls now being pushed in that country.
 
Countdown starts to mobile payments for all
Paying a friend or business on your mobile as easily as sending a text is set to become a mainstream option in spring 2014, when the (UK) Payments Council's new mobile payments service launches.
 
A new mobile phone device for small payments, PayTag, could kill off banknotes and coins
Cashless payment systems are bad news for our spending habits, according to Martin Vander Weyer. Telegraph, 19 April 2012.
 
Barclaycard PayTag targets contactless payments market
Barclaycard has launched a stick-on credit card which will allow its 12 million customers the chance to make wave-and-pay purchases from their mobile phone or other item of their choice. Guardian, 19 April 2012.
 
Barclays launches Pingit money-sending service for smartphones
Barclays bank has launched Europe's first money-sending service that allows UK current account customers to send and receive cash through their mobile phones. Barclays' current account customers can download the bank's Pingit app to their smartphone and start making instant money transfers to anyone with a UK-based mobile phone and a current account with any UK bank. Guardian, 16 February 2012.
 
Pay using a mobile? You?ll be lucky! We test out Quick Tap phone payments
A journalist describes the problems she encountered when trying to use her mobile phone instead of cash to make payments. This is Money, 3rd August 2011.
 
'Wave and pay' mobile phone spells the end for cash
Orange and Samsung have teamed-up with Barclaycard to provide mobile phone payments. Matt Warman explains why cash is doomed. Daily Telegraph, 21 May 2011.
 
Orange to bring mobile phone 'wave and pay' system to UK
Orange is set to become the first operator in the UK to allow customers to pay for goods with a swipe of their mobile phone, after signing a strategic deal with Barclays. The Independent, 27 January 2011.
 
Wave and pay technology for iPhone 5
Apple is expected to install wave and pay technology for the next version of its iPhone, boosting mobile commerce and potentially giving the company a big piece of the multibillion-dollar transaction industry. Financial Times, January 25 2011.
 
Mobile Payments World
Mobile Payments World is the on-line newsletter from PaymentsCM LLP - publishers of Payments Cards and Mobile, European Card Review and The European Payment Cards Yearbook. Its mission is to record and explain trends in Mobile Payments, Mobile Commerce, Mobile NFC and Mobile Money Transfer industries.
 
Will "wave and pay" cards replace cash?
A discussion forum in which people debate the pros and cons.
 
Linden Dollar
Second Life is a 3-D virtual world created by its residents with a marketplace currently supporting millions of US dollars in monthly transactions. This commerce is handled with the the Linden dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online Linden dollar exchanges.
 
Oyster wave-and-pay trial is successful
A combined travel and payment card from Transport for London, Barclaycard and Visa works, a trial has found. 8th May 2007.
 
docdata payments
An international provider of payment solutions to companies and organizations that sell in a non face-to-face environment. It is based in the Netherlands.
 
Merchant Account Services
The aim of the site is to provide merchants with the tools they need to make informed decisions when acquiring merchant services.
 
BT click&buy
This BT facility allows Internet users to pay for online content and services via their BT home or business telephone bill.
 
South Korea ready to hang up on cash
A television news report on how South Korea has introduced a common system for payments via mobile phones that has been accepted by all the country's banks. BBC, 13 February 2009.
 
Paymo
By 2009 70% of the world's online population still did not have credit cards but over 3 billion people owned a mobile phone. Paymo allows consumers anywhere in the world to buy online and pay with their mobile phone.
 
LUUP
LUUP is a payment solution for online and mobile payment. Participants get a mobile wallet they can use to pay with their mobile phone or online. Just like an ordinary wallet, the LUUP wallet can contain cash and credit/debit cards.
 
Developing world's text bank plan
A three-year project led by the UK will build on an earlier money transfer programme set up in Kenya. It is hoped that a banking system using mobile phones could soon help millions of the world's poorest people to tackle poverty. BBC, 13 February 2009.
 
Money transfer service wows Kenya
The lives of many Kenyans are being transformed by an innovative mobile phone money transfer service, M-PESA. BBC, 3 April 2007.
 
Mobile Phone Banking and Low-Income Customers: Evidence from South Africa
A report by the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, the World Bank and United Nations Foundation and the Vodafone Group Foundation, 2006.
 
Out of Africa
An article by David Birch describing how mobile phones are being used to transfer money in Africa. Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce, December 2005, vol. 10, no.3.
 
Upwardly mobile
How mobile phones and scratch cards can be used to transfer money rapidly and cheaply in Africa. Dave Birch, The Guardian, August 18, 2005.
 
The real digital divide
Mobile phones are used to make cashless payments in Zambia and several other African countries. The Economist, March 10, 2005.
 
Africa's cell phone boom creates a base for low-cost banking
In South Africa mobile phones are beginning to perform another function: personal piggy bank.Christian Science Monitor, August 28 2005.
 
Taking charge
As BT seeks to grow its online payments business, Ken Young asks if it can rival PayPal's success. Guardian, February 3, 2005.
 
Put the tab on my mobile
An innovative payments system for your phone could give credit card companies a run for their money. Ben Hammersley, the Guardian, May 27, 2004.
 
ePoint
A system designed for annonymous electronic transactions, including micropayments.
 
Geek Credit
Geek Credit is a digital complementary currency for internet. It is decentralized, secure, interest and demurrage free. It is backed by mutual credit (time). There is no central issuing and control authority, so it is a true peer-to-peer currency.
 
Smart Voucher
A simple platform for securely managing and transferring personal payments between people and/or organisations both online and offline in real time.
 
DM - Digital Money
An open source micropayment system based on Java, JXTA, XML, OpenPGP and SSL.
 
Payment in kind
An article about the Smart Voucher system and its founder Scott Thomson who has an outstanding record of innovation in the technology of financial transactions. Guardian, 10 April 2003.
 
Clickshare
Clickshare allows a consumer to have one account at a most-trusted website and buy from other websites without having to pass around a credit-card number, register or give out personal information. One ID, one account, one bill.
 
Peppercoin
A low-cost electronic payment system for processing micropayments based on the work of Ron Rivest, father of the RSA Public Key crypto-security system, and Silvio Micali, two of the world's leading cryptographers and information security experts.
 
AllCharge
A system developed by Newgenpay that can be used for micropayments.
 
PayPal
An international system which allows individuals to send money to each other by e-mail.
 
Skrill (Moneybookers)
A fast system for making payments. For some purposes it is free and the charges for international payments using different currencies are low.
 
Future visions: A new way for e-commerce
Wingham Rowan describes his brainchild, Guaranteed Electronic Markets or GEMs, a framework for online markets in which anyone could sell anything with each transaction underpinned by the government in the country of operation.
 
Internet Cash
An anonymous system using prepaid cards that may be purchased at convenience stores, retail outlets or over the Internet from the website.
 
Digging Those Digicash Blues
For years, Robert Hettinga has been agitating, begging and pleading for the world to listen to his ambitious plans for digital money. Wired, June 14, 2001.
 
Reengineering Money: the Mondex Stored Value Card and Beyond
A report by David C. Croson on the origins and the early history of the Mondex card.
 
Stored Value Cards: Costly Private Substitutes for Government Currency
by Jeffrey M. Lacker, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Economic Quarterly, vol. 82/83, Summer 1996. Stored value cards are particularly well-suited for transactions that would otherwise be carried out with currency and thus are a private substitute for government fiat money, like private banknotes.
 
Stored Value Cards: An Alternative for the Unbanked?
Stored value cards use magnetic stripe technology to store information about funds that have been prepaid to the card. Certain types of these cards are being heavily marketed to lower-income consumers, especially the unbanked or underbanked. Federal Reserve Bank of New York, July 2004.
 
Smartshield
This is a magnetically shielded cardholder which is claimed to protect contactless smartcards from surreptitious, wireless access by hackers, electronic pickpockets or the government.
 
NetCheque
An electronic payment system for the Internet developed at the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California
 
E-Gold
Electronic money 100% backed by gold!
 
eCoin
A token-based micropayment system.
 
Paying the Piper on the Web: Is NetBill the Answer?
How will we pay for the many small items of proprietary data that someday we'll be downloading from the Internet? In a NYU colloquium in 1995, Professor Marvin Sirbu outlined a protocol that he and others at Carnegie Mellon University have been developing.
 
NetCard
The NetCard project aims to provide solutions by the development of new protocols and a smartcard based mechanism to manage the necessary functions of authentication, delegation, authorisation, accounting and revocation. The new technology will be tested and demonstrated in a trial multimedia system connecting Cambridge and Manchester universities
 
Digital ssl certificate authority vendor
Digi-sign.com, reliable digital certificate authority vendor. Provides two factor authentication solutions and digital signature certificates.
 
Secure Electronic Transaction
SET is the first global security standard for trading via the Internet.
 
Secure Electronic Transaction
An explanation of how the system works.
 

General Resources, Articles and Conference Papers About E-Money

Monetary Innovation in Historical Perspective
A paper that was given by Glyn Davies as the keynote address at the First Consult Hyperion Digital Money Forum, London, on the theme Digital Money: New Era or Business as Usual? He argued that when you examine closely changes in the form of money, revolution always boils down to evolution.
 
When Bank Systems Fail
A book by Stephen Mason about debitcCards, credit cards, ATMs, mobile and online banking: your rights and what to do when things go wrong.
 
The Future of Money
As the technology of money and currency advances, how will it effect the social and psychological dimensions of our uses of, and interactions with money? This website is a summary of projects by MA students in the Design Interactions Department at the Royal College of Art exploring future possibilities for e-money: New pleasures, opportunities, hazards, and rituals.
 
The International War on Cash
An article by Joseph Salerno on how measures by the governments of different countries to restrict the use of cash in payments is threatening freedom. In some countries citizens have used legal tender rules against their own governemnts.
 
End of physical currency a 'reality', says Visa
The end of physical notes and coins is becoming a 'reality' as the use of new technologies expands, according to Visa. Telegraph, 22 January 2014.
 
Quantum Money
By Scott Aaronson, Edward Farhi, David Gosset, Avinatan Hassidim, Jonathan Kelner, and Andrew Lutomirski. Communications of the ACM, Vol. 55 No. 8, Pages 84-92. Everybody likes money. It is very easy to spend. With cash and credit cards, you can buy what you want when you want it. So why are quantum computing theorists trying to rethink money?
 
Card payments expected to outstrip cash within 10 years while mobiles will drive next "payments revolution"
Plastic will overtake cash and our mobile phones will play a larger role in managing our day-to-day finances over the next 10 years, the Payments Council has predicted. This is Money, 20 August 2013.
 
Electronic system that could save the cheque
A new electronic system could save the once-threatened method of paying by cheque. A team from Newcastle, York and Northumbria Universities developed the system after speaking to a group of 80-year-olds from Tyneside. Telegraph, 12 February 2012.
 
Cheques not to be scrapped after all, banks say
The banking industry will not scrap the use of cheques after all, it has been announced. The Payments Council, a banking industry body, had been planning to replace them by 2018. BBC, 12 July 2011.
 
New Report Reveals Massive Change in the Ways We Pay over the Last Decade
A new report, The Way We Pay 2010, published on 14 April 2010 by the Payments Council shows a payments revolution occurred in the noughties, and this looks set to continue over the next decade. The last decade not only saw the rise of internet banking and shopping but it was also the decade where cards took control of our wallets as cheques and cash were increasingly replaced by a card ? particularly the debit card.
 
Chequebooks used six times more than online payments
The proclamation that the bank cheque is dead may have been premature. Britain's affection for writing cheques may be diminishing but it is still vastly more popular than online transactions. Daily Telegraph, 18 January 2010.
 
Is a cashless society on the cards?
Steve Perry, executive vice president of Visa Europe, says cash is expensive - a cost on society - and should be replaced by a cashless society. Daily Telegraph, 11 January 2010.
 
Cheques to be phased out in 2018
Cheques will be phased out by October 2018, but only if adequate alternatives are developed the UK Payments Council has decided. BBC, 16 December 2009.
 
Cheques out, but what does it mean for everyday payments?
Cheques will be abolished in 2018. So how will you pay the milkman? Or buy school lunches? And how will small businesses cope? Guardian, 19 December 2009.
 
Dying cheques mark changing times
Consumers in the UK should expect a revolution in the way they pay for things in the near future, according to payments association Apacs. BBC, 17 February 2009.
 
Challenges to a "cashless" world
The global credit crunch has delayed the shift from payments being made by mobiles instead of dollars or pounds, according to technology experts. BBC, 13 February 2009.
 
Virtual World Taxation: Theories of Income Taxation Applied to the Second Life Virtual Economy
An article by Timothy J. Miano which has quite a lot about the functions of currency in the real and virtual worlds.
 
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Payment Cards Centre
The Payment Cards Center was established to serve as a source of knowledge and expertise on consumer credit and payments.
 
Peter Ayliffe: Watchdogs fire plastic bullets, but Visa will stick to its guns
Peter Ayliffe, he chief executive of Visa Europe, expected Britain to be a cashless society by 2012.
 
Payment cards are first step towards making cash obsolete
f banks and major retailers have their way, notes and coins may soon be redundant, says David Prosser, 24 September 2005.
 
Micropayments Overview
A working group of W3C, the World Wide Web Consortium, provides this information.
 
A consumer's guide to e-payments
This guide was produced by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission Bureau of Consumer Protection.
 
The Micropayments Conference
A conference on business and technology trends held in New York, November 3, 2003.
 
Can You Spare a % of a Dime?
What is wrong with micropayments by Oliver Masciarotte. May 1, 2003.
 
Misunderstanding Micropayments
The Good Idea that Refuses to Die. An essay by Scott McCloud.
 
Fractal Transactions: Launching a New Era in the Future of Money
An article by Thomas Frey is the Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute about the remarkable changes that could result from the introduction of payments in real time.
 
The Center for Research in Electronic Commerce
Since its establishment in 1988, the McCombs School Center for Research in Electronic Commerce (CREC) at the University of Texas at Austin has served as an incubator for breakthrough research blending business and computer science.
 
16th Digital Money Forum 2013: Tomorrow's Transactions
An annual conference arranged by Hyperion in London.
 
Digital Money Blog
Debate at the intersection of business, technology and culture in the world of retail electronic payments, a blog born from the annual Digital Money Forum in London.
 
Principles for a free, powerful and stable monetary system for the digital era
A theoretical article by Sylvain Poirier, a mathematician. Technologies are bringing us closer to a virtualisation of the currency and this gives us new opportunity to set up a finally coherent monetary system based on new principles.
 
EU Directive on the prudential supervision of electronic money institutions
The full text of directive 2000/46/EC. Members of the European Union are supposed to incorporate these proposals in their national laws by 27 April 2002.
 
Past Currency
As another attempt is made to revive micropayments, Steve Bowbrick questions whether the concept can ever succeed. The Guardian, February 25, 2003.
 
E-money gets a jumpstart
In Britain anyone complying with the Financial Services Authority (FSA) rules can issue electronic money (e-money).
 
The Regulation of Electronic Money Issuers
A consultation Paper published by the (UK) Financial Services Authority in December 2001.
 
Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce
Often contains relevant information about e-money.
 
CPSS Survey of Electronic Money Developments
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), through the Secretariat to the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems (CPSS) and with the help of central banks worldwide, has been regularly surveying electronic money developments in order to ensure that central banks have adequate information to monitor the growth of electronic money and to assess its possible consequences.
 
EMI Opinion on Issuance of Electronic Money
Part of the annual report for 1997 of the European Monetary Institute. It urges that EU central banks should establish clear rules governing the issuance of electronic money.
 
Prudential supervision of the business of electronic money institutions
Official proposals from the European Union for the supervision of organisations issuing electronic money.
 
ITAS-Tagung "25 Jahre Technikfolgenabschätzung in Deutschland" - eine bedenkliche Geschichtsklitterung?
A set of papers on electronic payments published in TA-Datenbank-Nachrichten vol. 7, no. 2, June 1998. Most of the papers are in German but there are a few in English.
 
Electric Currency Could Trash Cash
An article from the Guardian online supplement, 4 November 1999. Once money moves online, it moves out of the control of central banks, crippling their ability to run the economy. The deputy governor of the Bank of England is quoted as saying that once central bankers lose their monopoly over printing money "the successors to Bill Gates would have put the successors to Alan Greenspan out of business."
 
Roger Clarke?s eBusiness Home-Page
A website devoted to all aspects of electronic commerce, including payment schemes.
 
The Future of Money
A collection of articles from Wired magazine.
 
Electronic Cash and Monetary Policy
by Mark Bernkopf who served at the Open Market Operations Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and in the research unit of the White House Office of Communications.
 
Essays and White Papers by Nick Szabo
. Articles on e-money, smart contracts etc. by a member of the DigiCash team.
 
Numbers That Are Money
by Daniel Akst. Originally published in the Los Angeles Times Magazine on February 4, 1996. An article on the significance of the work by David Chaum on DigiCash.
 
Exploring Digital Cash
Some notes from UC Berkeley School of Information Management and Systems.
 
Efficient Electronic Cash: New Notions and Techniques
An abstract of a thesis by Yiannis Tsiounis, director of InternetCash
The full thesis is available as a Postscript or a compressed Postscript file from Yiannis Tsiounis's website.
 
Credentica
A firm founded by Stefan Brands who developed U-Prove, a Privacy-enhancing Digital credential technology for claims-based identity management.
 
Felix Stalder's archive of papers on electronic money
He was a postdoctoral fellow at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, whose PhD at the University of Toronto was on the subject of electronic money.
 
Digital Payments
A presentation by Peter Magnusson of the Swedish Institute of Computer Science.
 
Possible Economic Consequences of Digital-Cash
by Tatsuo Tanaka, Center for Global Communications, International University of Japan. Digital cash will bring us benefits as well as problems. One major benefit of digital cash is its increased efficiency which will open new business opportunities, especially for small businesses. On the other hand, it will bring us four problems: taxation and money laundering, instability of the foreign exchange rate, disturbance of money supply, and the possibility of financial crisis.
 
The Future of Money
E-cash could transform the world's financial life. BusinessWeek June 12, 1995.
 
The Future of Money
An interview with Walter Wriston by Thomas A. Bass for Wired magazine. See also the Wired Archive on the Future of Money .
 
Digital Money Database
Leo Van Hove's Database of articles on E-purses, i.e. any electronic device or instrument for the loading/storage, management and access to/spending of digital values that can be used as a means of payment.
 
E-Money (That's What I Want) by Steven Levy
An article that appeared in Wired vol. 2, no. 12, 1994. The killer application for electronic networks isn't video-on-demand. It's going to hit you where it really matters - in your wallet.
 
Digital Cash & Monetary Freedom
A paper by Jon W. Matonis describing the differences between mere encrypted credit card schemes and true digital cash, which presents a revolutionary opportunity to transform payments.
 
Regulating Electronic Money in Small-Value Payment Systems
An article by Randall W. Sifers that originally appeared in the Federal Communications Law Journal, April 1997. Sifers urges that telecommunications law should be taken as a regulatory model.
 
Le paiement électronique sur Internet - Alain Plamondon
An extensive and well organised collection of material in French on electronic payments
 
Electronic Money and Monetary Policy a paper by Reynolds Griffith, Southwestern Economic Proceedings Volume 31 2004 Number 1 p 47-56.
Central banks and economists must try to anticipate the effects of electronic money.
 
Digital Money
a large collection of links to information sources, maintained by Brad Cox.
 
Should Information Be Free? by Roy Davies.
A shorter version of this essay was published in the inaugural issue of the British edition of Wired vol. 1 no.1 1995, p. 61.
 
Token and Notational Money in Electronic Commerce
by L. Jean Camp, Marvin Sirbu, and J. D. Tygar.
 
The End of Money and the Struggle for Financial Privacy
A review of a book by Richard Rahn.
 
Regulating Electronic Money
As Alan Greenspan was the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board his opinions were particularly important. This paper was originally presented at the U.S. Treasury Conference on Electronic Money & Banking: The Role of Government, Washington, D.C., September 19, 1996.
 
The Internet and the Future of Money
An article by Howard Rheingold who believes that the global communications network has a role to play in the development of local currencies.
 
Warning: 666 Is Coming! by Terry Watkins
The advent of e-money could be a sign that the end of the world is nigh!
 
The End of Ordinary Money Part 1
by J. Orlin Grabbe.
 
The End of Ordinary Money Part 2
Money Laundering, Electronic Cash, and Cryptological Anonymity by J. Orlin Grabbe.
 
The Effect of Internet Value Transfer Systems on Monetary Policy
by Ian Grigg. This paper argues that, in actuality, Internet cash issuance will not be a strong force, neither against the tools of monetary policy, nor for its own mercantile purposes.

Other Collections of Links on E-Money

Transaction Net
A good source of information on electronic currency and for views on the economic effects of transactions over the Internet.
 
The Electronic Commerce Guide
This site provided by Mecklermedia, a publisher of Internet-related magazines, features news, articles and links related to electronic commerce on the Web.
 
See also the links in my page on the Internet and economics for additional background information on e-money.

From Cattle to Electronic Money

Cover of the book on monetary history by Glyn Davies. For a narrative account of monetary history since the dawn of civilisation onwards see A History of Money from Ancient Times to the Present Day by Glyn Davies .

The web site based on the book includes an extensive annotated chronology as well as some essays by Roy Davies based on certain themes from the book.


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Roy Davies - last updated 1 February 2019.