E-Money

Posted by santosj on January 8, 2006

I have been waiting for electronic money for a long time, but it may still be a little longer before it becomes the major form and only form of currency. I hardly ever use cash for anything and if a place doesn’t accept a major form of credit card, then I’ll most likely not show up there. Why in a society do we still use physical currency, when we can go to a system that would save millions, if not billions? There are problems with electronic transaction that would need to be solved before a major hacker takes advantage of the system.

Problems

  • A hacker can cripple the new system and break the trust of the people.
  • The system would have to have a high level of encryption, with extremely low probablity of cracking.
  • The system would also have to be easily upgradable in the case of security flaws.
  • There should also be an easy to use API for other intuitions to use the nation wide system with security checks and balances.
  • There should be a barrier to keep other countries out of the system, except when they comply to a strict security policy.

The system would need a body governing standards and practices for which every company and government acency would follow. Well tested and undergo a harsh hacking tests, the finished product would be open to all companies, big and small.

Changing the way money works, would take a great deal of money and time to complete. The savings in the long run would be worth it, and it would be easier to track fraud (or perhaps create it).

The government would need to sort of set up their own electronic system for which all of the other banks will use. Those who are afraid of government regulations and gaining to much control would freak the hell out. There doesn’t need to be this system, but my vision is that it would be a super computer like the one behind DNS. It could also get rid of the IRS (Yeah!) and help do away with the Social Security.

There needs to be a way for making sure that the person using the card is the owner of the card and not someone who picked the card up and trying to use it.

What Good Will Come of It?< ?strong>

Making it a universal way of using money, would stop the government from having to spend money, to print money, and from people conterfeiting paper money. They would have to switch their full focus to hackers trying to exploit the new system. It should be a lot easier to track someone that is using an IP address, than someone pretending and using someone elses data.

Since banks exist everywhere, it wouldn’t be to hard to sign up an account, whether it is online or at a physical location. Banks also won’t need to have a brick and mortar shop set up everywhere, since everything would be done online anyway. Those that do have Brick and Mortar can allow Internet access and almost do away with real tellers. It would be almost impossible for someone to rob a bank, since there is no physical cash involved and if they do try to steal from the e-cash, then that money would be tractable and wouldn’t do the thief any good.

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