Slashdot Mirror
Cashless Society
roomisigloomis writes "France has released "en masse" a new card to replace money. No private information is stored on the card and anybody can use it. Just like cash: you lose it and someone else uses it. Do you think we could be nearing the end of life of paper money?"
This CashCard has existed here in switzerland for several years. It is, however, largely ignored except for a few places.
The reason for that is simple and the same as why, in France, the new card is not being well accepted: It has an expensive transaction cost compared to the price of the item you purshase (think 10 centims per transaction where you would use it to buy 1 Euro items), the fact that it is far from annonymous and finally the fact that the machine you use to "load" the card is compley and damn slow to manipulate (whant to buy ? Load your credit card, punch your PIN, wait until the bank answer, withdraw your card, load your cashcard, deposit, remove cash card, load it again, buy item - about 5 minutes for the average persone).
The only place here, in Geneva, where it is commonly used is for public phones and for paying for car park. Several articales of the French TV and the words from my French friends shows that the same apply to France.
Same in Holland...
As a french pro-european, I'll amazed at the short-sightedness of the various european govs in supporting those cards.
As pointed out in numerous posts, cards like this exist all over Europe... and yet, AFAIK, none are compatible.
Think about it: with the Euro, I can go in any of the 12 participating countries and pay with the same money, without any problem. With this great cool new gadget, I'm limited to a few shops in my own country. Oh, and I kinda like the euro coins, it's fun to see some from 12 different countries mixing in my pocket. This thing is just a bit of plastic. And it's expensive too.
Needless to say, I'm not getting one before I can use it all over the EU. And before it gets cheaper, as well.
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Don't know about France, but here in Belgium we have a little keychain gizmo in which to insert the card and it tells you the amount you just purchased, as well as the last couple of transactions (just the amount).
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
Since smart cards in France all incorporate a chip, their magnetic strips are rarely used. Thus, even if the strip id demagnetised, so long as the chip is OK, the card is OK too.
And hopefully, it takes more work to mess a chip up than a magnetic strip.
Someone could just probably figure out how money is "stored" and just keep on replenishing. Note the card is anonymous.
David Chaum's digicash system was a good solution to this problem. He developed a system of completely anonymous (even to the bank) e-cash. The executive summary is: using techniques common in encryption, the cash is unforgeable and can be spent once. If you spend the cash twice, there's a random challenge-response sequence you have to go through each time, and you will have now revealed enough information that you're no longer anonymous, and the fact that the money is being double-billed is detected and prevented.
Googling for "Chaum" and "digicash" gets you a lot of articles which explain the system (which is quite complex) in a level of detail beyond that which is appropriate for slashdot. :) It's a bit hard to believe (at least without going through the math yourself) that it's both anonymous and unforgeable, but that's the beauty of it. There are also quite a few articles about Chaum's company "Digicash" which appears to have been poorly managed. That doesn't change the fact that the mathematics behind digicash are sound.
Seriously though, this is just silly. By now everyone has heard of 'Debit Cards' and I would think that a fair number of /.ers have paypal mastercard debit cards.
Well guess what?
Canada has been there for years.
4 out of 5 stores (or in a mall, every store) has Interacmachines. Direct debit, pin protected, and ANY bank card on the interac network works on it. That is every major bank in Canada, almost all the little ones, plus most credit unions.
Explain how a pin protected card (which is cancelable by phone) is better than this 'new' french system? I mean, their system is just basically a revamp of european phone cards.
The only benefits the french system has over Interac is anonymity - As for that, we do still have cash for that, or in the case of a true cashless society, just trade in precious minerals. (eg, gold.)
By the way, Interac direct payment has been rolled out since `94
Desperation is a stinky cologne
Huh? Do you think that currently when you have x dollars in YOUR bank account, the bank does not touch that money and keeps it safely secured for you? Or do they loan it out to other customers and earn interest? Of course the latter - that's how banks work!
Random is the New Order.
I'm the writer of the parent post, which is currently rated highly but is nevertheless quite wrong in its description of the implementation of the procedure. Others have corrected my misunderstanding, which, if I'm not still mistaken, goes something like this:
Step 1) $100 are downloaded from John Smith's bank account to user card #U12345.
Step 2) Smith approaches Adult Store merchant with $80 worth of embarrassingly large and bumpy sex toys.
Step 3) User Card #U12345 securely transfers $80 to Merchant Card. This transaction takes place off of a network.
Step 4) Smith walks away with sex toys in black plastic bag. Bag later breaks on the bus, contents come spilling out.
Step 5) Merchant subseqently uploads large sum of money (including Smith's $80) to bank. Bank is unaware of original sources of money.
It's the fact that Step 3 takes place without authorization from a central network which makes this anonymous and potentially superior to a regular debit card transaction.
Please "securely transfer" my mod points from the parent post to this one. Thanx!
I'm wondering about other form factors now. Would it be more practical to have a user "card" in the form of one of those keychain thingies? Or perhaps a bracelet with a tiny dongle that plugs into the merchant's reader. Further, the user ought to be able to require mandatory PIN usage on his/her card. It won't help if the card is lost, but at least no-one else could profit from your misfortune. Put your name and phone number on the card and it might actually be returned to you. Finally, what's to stop this anonymous transaction from being the basis of a money laundering scheme? And if there is nothing preventing it, what are the odds that this would be allowable in the US?
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.