IfBG Home Page| Finance Page| Banking Page| Currency Page| Other Information Money and Payment Systems ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Add new links ------------------------------------------------------------------------ History of Money •History of Money from Ancient Times to the Present Day - A collection of essays written by Roy Davies. •A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of Paper Currency by Benjamin Franklin (1729) Paper Money and Coins •Other People's Money •World Paper Money •Irish Coins and Banknotes •Coins, Gold and other Metals •Paper Money FAQ Digital Money and Electronic Payment Systems •Publications on Electronic Cash - by Stefan Brands •Digital Money •Network Money Sites on the Internet •Network Payment Mechanisms and Digital Cash •Electronic Payment Systems and Security •Payment mechanisms designed for the Internet •Network Money: The Future of Banking and Commerce on the Internet •TeleCounter Electronic Banking •Digital Cash and Monetary Freedom by Jon W. Matonis •World Wide Web Virtual Library: Cryptography, PGP, and Your Privacy •Electronic Commerce, Payment Systems, and Security •Paylink! - Electronic Bill Payment Service through Internet. It is completely secure, safe, easy and convinient to use. Corporations and Projects •CyberCash, Inc. •DigiCash •First Virtual Holding Company •LETSystems - LETSystems are money systems designed to meet community, personal & practical needs. Their form and function are specified by definitions and agreements. There are many possible variations on the basic LETSystem, meeting different economic and social purposes. •NetBill Project Home Page •NetChex •The NetCheque(TM) network payment system and The NetCash(TM) anonymous network payment system •NetCash Software Agents, Inc. •Center for Global Trade Development •The CAFE project: Secure electronic payment systems with privacy - The CAFE (Conditional Access For Europe) project is a European Community ESPRIT project to develop a secure electronic payment system which protects the privacy of the user. There are some thirteen partners from several countries involved. The target is to make electronic wallets, that can be used for payment, access to information services, and - if required - identification. It will be an open but secure system. Credit Cards and Card-Service •CardWeb - Links to card issuer product documents or transfer to card issuer's web site. Review card features and examine the disclosure chart. Apply directly on issuers website, print out application or be referred to application phone number. •Credit Cards-Services •GNN Credit Cards Page •Barclaycard •Cardservice International. - Largest independent merchant credit card processor for Visa/MasterCard. Services are provided to traditional merchants and Internet merchants requiring credit card acceptance services. •Credit Card Network - On-line Credit Card Applications, Free credit card issuer profiles •Digipass - Digipass is a successful Belgian company specialising in security cards that generate time-dependent passwords. Over 600,000 cards are used worlwide mainly in Home-Banking services •MasterCard International •Mondex •VISA •Sumitomo Card Service ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright (c) 1994-96 IFBG Göttingen Note by John Zube, 17.12.1998: Clearing mutual debts, in one's head (personal obligations), in account books, via money tokens in a largely anonymous and unconscious way, locally, nationally and internationally, hasn't been a major TECHNICAL problem for a long time. Doing it electronically is just a technical change and one often not as easy and anonymous as a "cash deal". In all cases of clearing, whether via shells or electrons, one ought to clearly distinguish between the value standard used and the means of exchange or means of payment or settlement used. Both must be optional, i.e., freedom of choice for value standards is required between trading partners as well as freedom of issue combined with freedom to refuse to accept or to discount - for all but the issuer, who remains under the obligation to recognize and accept his own "IOU" at par. (Towards him it has thus a natural "legal tender".) From this distinction and what it implies follows the full range of monetary freedom, as Dr. Walter Zander once pointed out to me. Ulrich von Beckerath, 1882-1969 has developed its details, including enumeration of all the monetary rights, in several books and in his correspondence. Mixing up these two, making them exclusive and compulsory leads to numerous misconceptions and practical difficulties, as well as to "monetary crimes". The value standard, electronically used, between consenting trading partners, might NOT be e.g. a certain weight of gold, physically present within a payment community, but, rather, merely the current purchasing power of that weight of gold in a free market, without either debtor having the right to demand this weight in physical gold or the creditor being obliged to supply it. But the issuers of the electronic credit must oblige themselves to accept it - LIKE the equivalent weight of gold - in payment for all their ready-for-sale goods and services. Then issuers do not have to possess a gold hoard or reserve to cover all their desired and possible trades. All the gold in the world, in a free gold market becomes then the greatest possible "redemption fund", one that is, as such, safe from any "run". - Publicity for the par value of private money tokens or electronic cash on a free gold market will be all that is required for the supposedly required "trust" and "confidence" in a private, competitive and market rated means of exchange reckoning or accounting in gold weight units. Moreover, these goods and services, serving as cover and redemption funds for the physical or electronic "tickets" must be goods or services in daily demand, at least locally - otherwise such credit notes or electronic credits will not constitute CURRENCY, i.e. will not be readily accepted, at least locally, at par with their nominal gold weight value. Too many writings on monetary freedom options do not make these distinctions clearly enough. They still want to enchain the issuers with chains of gold and do not comprehend that people normally do not want gold coins as means of payment or gold certificates but simply convenient tickets for their purchases of goods and services. They do not want their other tickets covered in gold, either. But by all means, freedom for "gold bugs", too, to hamper themselves in this way, as long as they can stand it. Secret or private Internet trading has its advantage for the underground free economy. But sooner or later the free market has to be realized openly. And neither in the local general store nor in small towns will most trades and wage and salary payments be most conveniently conducted via computers and the Internet ONLY. Here printed tickets will still be convenient for a long time to come. But they must be paper money "tickets" without any of the coercive, fraudulent and exploitative features of government paper monies. And they must be and can be interchangeable with electronic credits, too. The lack of uniformity in means of payment and value standards will cause little hardship. Compare the numerous foreign exchange offices now operating in tourist centres. And who can't afford a small electronic calculator? Perhaps most important at all: Volunteer militias fighting for individual rights, libertarian revolutionaries, refugees and deserters should not be bound, for the means of payment they require, to computer software and hardware and their digital cash options. All monetary freedom options should be open to them and made known to them, so that they become able to pay or soon gainfully employed. To insist that they pay or are paid ONLY in digital cash or ONLY in gold, regardless of whether they are or can be so supplied, would be absurd and almost as wrong as insisting that they are paid only in government paper money. PIOT, J.Z., 17.12.1998.