Talk:Electronic money/Archive 1

Correct Terminology
The title of this article should be changed to "Electronic Currency" for the following reasons:

"Money" is the underlying commodity or token unit that "currency" systems are an extension of.

"Currency" is an account payable, or an indirect means of exchanging control over "money" that is located in a bank or vault. According to the U.S. Constitution gold and silver are the only lawful "money". US Dollars and Federal Reserve Notes started out as "currency notes" redeemable from the U.S. Treasury. Other national currencies followed the same pattern. People would trade these government notes without cashing them in so that the currency notes themselves became used like money.

After the US and other governments reneged on the redeemability of their notes, the notes themselves became in effect "money", because a dollar bill is considered something of value in and of itself, and does not represent a promise to pay gold or anything else.

Extending these definitions into the digital world, "Electronic Currency" is a system of exchanging control over money electronically. By "control over money", I mean the money (gold, national currency notes, widgets, etc) is held by a party who allows account holders to exchange balances as a person to person payment system. The balances can then be redeemed for the actual underlying "money" whether it be national currency notes, gold bars, or whatever.

Example #1 Joe uses Paypal to transfer $20 to John's PayPal account. In reality, PayPal owed Joe a certain number of US Dollars, held in a bank somewhere. Joe then transferred PayPal's debt obligation to John. So now PayPal owes John $20. If John has his account swept to his bank, PayPal sends a transaction from their bank to his bank, so now John's bank owes him $20. If John goes to the teller window at his bank and withdraw's $20 cash, he has now finally received actual money because the dollar bill is not someone else's promise to pay him something.

Example #2 Fred has an e-gold account with a balance of 20 grams of gold. He transfers 10 grams to Joe's e-gold account. This was an electronic currency transaction because e-gold now owes Joe 10 grams more, and Fred ten grams less, but the money is the gold sitting in the vault.

If Fred opts to redeem his e-gold balance then e-gold ships him a bar of gold in the proper weight. The bar of gold is the actual money. Once Fred holds the gold in his hand, e-gold no longer owes him, his money is in hand.

To stay true to the definition of money versus currency, "Electronic Money" is an unbacked electronic token that is not a promise to pay. For example, in all online massively multiplayer games there exists game "money" that is merely an electronic token. Players in the game can collect these tokens, and trade them with each other for other items in the game or in the real world. Since this electronic money is not redeemable for anything and has value simply because of its utility as a common medium of exchange it is true money. Cadwallader (talk) 19:13, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Isn't electronic cash creating an actual digital coin with an RSA digital signature on it (e.g. Dave Chaums work), and backed by a 'bank' which uses the signature algorithm. Why are there credit card, and debit card middle-men posted on this as digital cash? -hendrixski Dec 7 2005.

Would the Australian/NZ EFTPOS system count as 'eletronic money'? While it is a 'debit card' style system it uses it's own non credit-card network and it's usage is wide enough to allmost be considerd an eletronic money system linked to a bank account.. --ElectraFlarefire 17:08, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Virtual Debit Cards have no place here, they are part of the EFT or electronic payment but not electronic money or cash. E-purse schemes should be mentioned such as Proton from Banksys in Belgium, or similar electronic cash schemes. Emmanuel Haydont (talk) 02:56, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

A suggestion... under the heading "Advantages" the article text reading: "Most money in today’s world is electronic, and tangible cash is beginning to become less and less frequent. With the introduction of internet / online banking, debit cards, online bill payments, and internet business, paper money is becoming a thing of the past." strikes me as vague and unsupported (aka the kind of statement I'd expect from marketing press releases and not NPOV articles). My suggestion, if anyone who is up on the topic concurs, would be to provide a concrete (attributed) datum showing decline in paper money usage to date. The "is becoming" future prediction implication I think should be ditched unless an expert or organization can be cited with a specific forcast. YMMV. Crystalion 09:58, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Is there a cost involved generally with transferring the money to a foreign nation in a different currency other than the genearl transfer fee. For instance when I use my visa in germany there is no surchage to me because the charge is in Euros and the rate is the actual rate without som surcharge as charged by the currecy converters. Whereas if I need to get some local currency I take the hits for the conversion costs.

Electronic funds transfer redirect?
I was searching for information on electronic funds transfers and was redirected to this page discussing electronic money. The two subjects are not at all the same thing. I propose a separate article be generated which discusses electronic funds transfers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stile4aly@yahoo.com (talk • contribs) 23 April, 2006 (UTC)


 * I second that. I looking for the difference between EFTs and wire transfers, if any, and this article was thoroughly useless.  Two different topics completely. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Insomniduck (talk • contribs) 5 May, 2006 (UTC)


 * I've started an Electronic funds transfer article, so that topic no longer redirects to this page. At the moment the EFT article only covers cardholder EFT, and needs much more on EFT systems for banking and businesses. Zaian 21:23, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

The article contadicts itself
First is says e-money is rare, but in the Advantages section Paper money is obsolete. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Puddytang (talk • contribs) 00:52, 7 February 2007 (UTC).

I have the same feeling, the debit credit EFT schemes should not be part of electronic cash. electronic cash, as digital money, is used in relation with electronic purse schemes. Reference to Interac is not appropriate here as it is a domestic canadian debit EFT scheme. Emmanuel Haydont (talk) 02:44, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Basic knowledge
What is the diference between digital cash and cash transacted through credit/ debit / charge cards? Is there any difference? Luizabpr 07:47, 17 June 2007 (Brazil)

it still reads pretty ugly
oh well. 129.25.134.97 (talk) 17:31, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Most of the article is OK, but this sentence "Technically electronic or digital money is a representation, or a system of debits and credits, used (but not limited to this) to exchange value, within another system, or itself as a stand alone system, online or offline." is ugly ... needs to be reworded. I'd attempt it but I'm not entirely clear what it's saying. --Joe (talk) 16:44, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

redirect / merge removal
I redirected from ecash and merged some material, then removed some pseudo-addcopy without references. - Ironic goat (talk) 21:51, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Still doesn't make sense
Is off-line anonymous e-cash possible? The article seems to imply that, but I can't figure out how that would ever work--74.4.112.213 (talk) 02:51, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Bitcoin removal
I have re-added Bitcoin to the decentralised electronic money systems list. If someone wishes to dispute its notability for this article, please discuss here first before removing. prat (talk) 12:21, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Merge "Virtual currency" as a section in "Electronic money"
Quoting from the articles "Electronic money refers to money or scrip which is only exchanged electronically." and "Virtual currency [...] is used to purchase virtual goods within a variety of online communities;". In my opinion virtual currency should be merged here and that page transformed in a redirect. -- CristianCantoro (talk) 09:19, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Virtual currency is typically restricted to use inside of a gaming environment (eg. linden dollars), whereas Electronic money is to augment or supplant conventional money. Alanl (talk) 07:59, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

The two Chaum papers 404
The URL 4: http://dsns.csie.nctu.edu.tw/research/crypto/HTML/PDF/C82/199.PDF 404's (available as http://www.hit.bme.hu/~buttyan/courses/BMEVIHIM219/2009/Chaum.BlindSigForPayment.1982.PDF instead) and  5: http://dsns.csie.nctu.edu.tw/research/crypto/HTML/PDF/C88/319.PDF(available as http://www4.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/lehre/seminare/hs/WS0203/security/Lit/chaum_fiat_naor_ecash.pdf instead) also 404s. -- Isotopp (talk) 10:06, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Removed 'future' and 'issues' sections
I removed these two sections since neither section was cited.

The 'future' section was arguable and read a little like pro-centralization (conservative; pro-status-quo) rant.

The 'issues' section included demonstrably false statements (eg: "limited supply", what? This is less of an issue with pure-digital currencies than physical cash in government fiat currencies)

Feel free to re-create these sections with appropriate citation. Uncited conjecture is original research and does not belong here.

prat (talk) 07:18, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

biometrics based digital currency
Biometrics based digital currency is used as a possible solution to the existing four major issues of the world - crime, corruption, terrorism and black money in the book '3rd Planet - The transformation begins'. Biometrics are used to authenticate the transactions. And plastic money and paper money are totally discarded from the usage and all transaction route through a cluster of centralized servers to authenticate and also for the purpose of vigilance.

Bravikiransingh (talk) 18:04, 23 August 2012 (UTC)