A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online

[Tim May]

On Thursday, July 24, 2003, at 11:16 AM, Sampo Syreeni wrote:

> On 2003-07-23, Sunder uttered:
>
>> If you want to do electronic payments that are non-anonymous you can
>> simply use a credit card or debit card (or something like paypal, 
>> egold),
>> or for larger quanitities you can do wire transfers - so why would we
>> need yet another a non-anonymous "cash" that isn't cash?
>
> I only objected to the notion that all digicash needs to be anonymous 
> in
> order to be desirable. I didn't say this particular system amounts to
> desirable weak digicash. To that end it would likely make far more 
> sense
> in the short term e.g. to marry Visa Electronic to PayPal. In the long
> term multiple cooperating PayPal-like entities could then be used to 
> build
> mixnets, making the digicash strongly anonymous.

This continuing confusion, by many people, about what "digicash" is 
shows the problem with using nonspecific terms.

In fact, "digicash" strongly suggests David Chaum's "Digicash," not 
some name for all forms of credit cards, ATMs, debit cards, PayPal, 
wire transfer, Mondex, and a scad of other systems that may use bits 
and electronic signals.

Conventionally, on this list and in the press about "digital cash," 
digital cash means something which has the untraceable and/or anonymous 
features of "cash" while being transferred digitally. It is NOT a Visa 
system or a PayPal account or a wire instruction to the Cayman Islands.

I choose not to call "untraceable/anonymous digital cash" by any of the 
marketing-oriented catchwords like "Digicash," "BearerBucks," 
"E-coins," "MeterMoney," whatever.

So, I strongly agree with your point that not all electronic forms of 
money need to be anonymous (untraceable) in order to be useful. 
HOWEVER, our interest is in the untraceable/anonymous. There are no 
doubt active groups discussing PayPal, VISA, MasterCard, DiscoverCard, 
etc. But they have nothing to do with Cypherpunks.

We should also fight the use of sloppy language in the press when 
mundane electronic funds transfer systems are called "digital cash."

--Tim May