DigiCash ready for Internet commerce and micropayment

DigiCash Ready for Internet Commerce & Micropayment.

European banks uses E-cash product from Dutch that is

a competitor to the UK Mondex system.

Ray Van Eng (04/21/97)

Two of Norway and Austria's biggest banks, Den norske Bank and Bank Austria will be implementing the Dutch-based DigiCash E-Cash system to enable consumers to purchase low cost products and services over the Internet.

Digicash, a pioneer in the development of electronic payment systems that provide security and privacy was founded in 1990 by David Chaum, a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley. The company has been hosting public e-cash trials as early as October 1994.

DigiCash's E-cash not only allows anonymous spending, it also allow person to person transfer of the E-cash. This peer-to-peer transfer feature means that the E-Cash system is similar to the UK Mondex e-purse system, however, DigiCash regards itself as more of a network system rather than a smart card only system.

After you have withdrawn money from your bank account and deposit it to your personal computer or a smart card, you can use the electronic currency at any shop that accept E-cash or make a person to person transfer to another individual. Due to the low transaction overhead, E-cash is particularly well-suited for "micropayment" commerce like reading a newspaper article online for mere pennies.

Incidentally, AT&T is also working on incorporating the Mondex system so as to make low value purchases of products and services practical over the Internet without the high cost associated with traditional credit card clearings.

The use of public key encryption ensures security for transactions over the Internet. Client browser software is available for all major platforms (MS Windows, Macintosh and UNIX or even text mode). The E-cash software also has built-in safety feature that allows customer to recover their money in the event of a hard disk crash.

DigiCash has licensees all over the world including the Mark Twain Bank in the United States, Merita Bank/EUnet in Finland, Nomura Research Institute (NRI) in Japan, Deutsche Bank in Germany and Advance Bank in Australia. Many of these financial institutions are actively engaging in issuing e-cash to their clients.

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