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?"
In Belgium this has been available for a couple of years now. It's called Proton over here and is pretty popular.
I wonder if there will be a way to transfer money directly from one card to another, although I suppose you would need a separate machine for that.
Otherwise you could only use it at places like stores, where they would have a card reader.
Paper money has the advantage over the card because you can see how much you have without accessing that information somewhere else.
down some strippers G-String? How I ask you?
What the hell are you supposed to do when someone decides to be an ass and demagnetize your card? Does your money just vanish since you can't scan it and it carries no identifying information?
Paper money has to be carefully studied and then duplicated with painstaking attention to detail.
Someone could just probably figure out how money is "stored" and just keep on replenishing. Note the card is anonymous.
Money might not grow on trees, but it can be created by computer
i wish the article looked into how the gov't insured that evildoers are not able to illegally hack cards to increase their value (or start counterfeiting cards) ..
the article did mention card refills, so it would seem the chip on the card is (re)writable.
----
i do not use drugs, i AM drugs -- Dali
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.
Of course, I'm not so certain that this needs to be a government implemented project. Companies in the private sector have already done something similar, see Visa.
And anyway, don't many people choose to be cashless as it is now? When I was in retail, a large percentage of people paid with debit cards linked to a major credit card. There's no cash! John Doe has his paycheck directly deposited in to his checking account, then pays for purchases with his debit card which utilizes a preexisting network system (Visa, Mastercard).
So bottom line: yeah, a (near-)cashless society is cool, but is government intervention necessary?
At a 100 Euro limit, even the lamest implementation, if moderatly resistant to hacking and with better resistance to a constant charge hack is better than paper money which can be printed en-masse.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
"never expires" - it does? thats not what the article says...
"never gets damaged" - all physical currency only exists in a physical and damagable form, paper rips, burns, gets washed... plastic money isn't especially sturdy and who wants to keep massive volumes of coins?
the money card would have a database (physically located in several places across the country/world) which is something physical cash cannot offer - a backup
sounds to me like this money card is just as anonymous, safe from expiry and damage than normal cash....
I don't see how this is addressed.
(1) What if the babysitter comes to my house and I owe $4.50. Do we both go to the nearest ATM to transfer onto our cards? Will I have a card swipe in my house (most probably not).
(2) The joke about lap dances someone made before my post actually rings true. How does one pay for these kinds of impromptu needs? How do I loan a friend $1 to get a bottle of pop? Do I give them my card to borrow? Would I give them my wallet? Maybe lap dancers will have card swipes strapped on
(3) What about counting your cash? Simply, how do you know how much is on your card without going to an ATM to get a readout?
(4) How do you give the kids a few dollars to shop or grab a bite? How do you give them one dollar to grab candy before the movie starts? Do you give them the entire card? Again, do you give your entire wallet / purse for a need like this?
(5) If a card gets snapped in half, then what? When a paper bill is ripped, a taped one is still legal tender. What about cards?
(6) Can someone run a bulk demagnetizer over my card and financially wipe me out? This is a serious concern, folks.
How are these simple needs addressed? I also like to think that the days of paper money are numbered -- but how are these needs met?
Maybe withdrawing all paper cash $5 and over, converting US dollar bills to a system like Canadian $1 and $2 coins for small change needs? Coins are much more convenient than paper that gets folded, spindled, mutilated, torn, etc.
Dunno about in Australia, but here in NZ we introduced polymer notes a few years ago, and they sure aint paper, damed tuff stuff - sure as hell can't tear it.
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If the card's worth were encoded on the magnetic strip itself, it would be a matter of days before someone figures out how to hack the thing and add as much cash as they want to it.
If, on the other hand, the card's worth were stored in some central location, the thing is not anonymous at all. There would be a centralied account somewhere (which necessitates some form of ID number by which people may be tracked), and there's no way guarantee that someone's not keeping track of transactions to and from that account.
I would argue that such a card can be no more anonymous that a standard debit card, which most of us carry today.
The problem I see with these cards is that you essentially buy them from a bank.
Let's say you buy a $100 dollar card from the bank. The bank transfers $100 from YOUR account to their account from which it can be used by the bank to loan to other customers and earn interest (mortgage loans, auto loans, credit card loans, etc). So if it takes 2 months for you to use up the $100, you've "given" your capital to the bank to use for two months.
On top of the banks getting the "earning power" of your $100, they charge you to get your capital back through transaction fees! So at a minimum, the bank makes 50 cents on every card it "fills up". If it takes you two months to use the card, they get up to ~$2.00 more!
On top of all that, what happens to the money that never gets used, lost cards, broken cards, cards that have only 50 cents left on them so they get tossed into glove box. I'm sure the banks won't let go of that "unclaimed" cash without a fight.
No, I'll continue to use my ATM card that's linked to an interest bearing checking account, even though its a microscopic rate and live under the illussion that I have control of my cash.
Actually it is definitely plastic - the notes don't crease in the same way paper does, they are hard to crumple and very resistant to tearing - they tend to stretch slightly if anything.
Best of all you can go for a surf with $5 in your back pocket and buy a pie & chips for lunch without having to leave a wallet on the beach.
The plastic money is also much harder wearing than paper money, lasting 5 to 10 times as long, and I have yet to see a nasty crumpled and dirty note like you get with paper money. (Dirt & grime doesn't stick to it very well)
With the card, you won't know if you have to go to the to refill it. Nobody knows exactly how much cash they have, and with a card, it's too easy to forget a few purchases and have less than you expected.
From the article:
Because the basic Moneo card is anonymous, there are no privacy or identity theft concerns.
Regardless of whether the "basic" card is anonymous, it's still clearly possible to track the card's use, and by extension, its user, who has to be identified to obtain the money to begin with.
Step 1) $100 were downloaded from John Smith's bank account to card #12345
Step 2) Card #12345 was just used to purchase $80 worth of pr0n.
Step 3) Bank sends John Smith a bunch of porn-related junk mail.
The retailer might not be able to ascertain John Smith's identity, but the bank most likely could, if it were part of the network.
And the government certainly could. Not familiar with France, but in US translate "could" as "would."
I hope someone can contradict me here. In particular, I'm wondering if there's a way to anonymize Step 1, such that: 1a) $100 is transferred from John Smith's account to a special secure escrow network which is holding money from many pending transfers. 1b) ATM 385 is given authorization to loads up a card with $100. 1c) ATM 385 loads #12345 with $100 drawn from the escrow network. 1d) After transaction is complete, all bank knows is that $100 is gone from John Smith's account and given to ATM 385. All ATM 385 remembers is that it loaded $100 onto card #12345. It doesn't remember the account it was originally taken from. Does this make sense?
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
In this column, you can read what I thought about this. "About a week ago, my bank asked me if I wanted a new plastic card, named Moneo. This card would be dedicated to small purchases, like newspapers or a french baguette. My bank also asked for 10 euros per year for the card..." Personally, I don't think Moneo will be successful except if it's free. For more details, check this BusinessWeek article or the official Moneo website (in french). Roland Piquepaille.(http://radio.weblogs.com/0105910/)
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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A safe encryption based handshaking requires an additional 'master card' with the intelligence to do the transer inside the reader. So its very unlikely your local homeless will walk around with a reader :) But it is possible!
Point is that the card of the merchent has to be emptied at the bank as well, and why is this important? Well; the bank has absolutely no way of tracking transactions to real persons.
This is the beaty of the system; in contrary to all electronic payment systems; this is the only one that actually makes your payments more anonymous.
We've got our 'Chip' cards already. They're wickedly convenient. 500 Euro limit, reloading machines all over the place, can use them many places - even raunchy ron's and parking meters.
I don't use chip cards where I would use paper money - I use PIN (my bank account) for these so I will have a limit. The Chip cards are great for places you would ordinarily carry around loose change.
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.
This was introduced in Denmark a couple of years ago, but it failed to get broad appeal.
If you want to see how to bring down the amount of cash that people have, you should have a look at the Danish "Dankort" system. It is because of that system that Denmark has the lowest amount of cash in circulation compared to the size of the economy. Personally I almost never carry any cash around.
http://www.dankort.dk/ (Danish)
The Dankort system is an online system with identity, but it has been constructed in a way that makes almost anybody able to get it. Of a population of 5 million, there are 3.3 million Dankort. If you subtract the children and the very old people, you'll find that almost anybody uses it.
Lars Dybdahl.
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.
Though I imagine you're right for this implementation, it is possible to build a digital cash cryptosystem that is as anonymous as cash. I believe Bruce Schneier covers the basics in Applied Cryptography; we went over it in an intro cryptography course I took, and I think that was the source.
The basic system is that the bank signs individual units of value (think individual bills). You then insert your card, and it transfers several of them over, gets change if needed, etc.
For the more detailed explanation (somewhat):
You, the party desiring cash from the bank, begin a transaction to create a bill. You tell the bank the account number to take the money from, and prove you're you through whatever standard techniques. Then, you create a handful (say 10) "bills"; they're real bills, minus the bank's signature. You give them each a randomly chosen 128 bit id (128 bits is enough to avoid collisions, globaly -- but you need a good source of randomness). Then, you blind each bill with a new random number. Then, you encrypt all the bills, using a different key created only for this purpose. This extra key will be thrown away when the transaction is complete. The blinding and encryption work such that you can only recover the original text with both the key and the blinding number. The bank then chooses one bill, signs it, asks to see the blinding numbers on the other 9 and also asks for the decryption key. The bank verifies that the other bills are valid, and can assume the tenth is too. They sign it and return it to you. You decrypt it and deblind it. The math works such that the banks signature is still intact. Basically, using RSA, encryption and decryption are exponentiation, and blinding is multiplication (all done modulo the key).
The bank has now signed your bill as being worth money, without knowing the id number on the bill.
This system is rather complicated, and it is unlikely something equivalent has been implemented in this case. But it is possible to do it right (just hard). I've simpleified a little, but the major pieces are there.
All of Australia's banknotes are made out of plastic. Which gives them the advantage of last a sodding long time...
:) Granted, $5s last a lot less, but it's still a whole lot better than paper (cotton pulp) notes.
:)
Australians or anyone with them.. the first two digits of the serial number are the year of manufacture. I have a $20 made in 1994 and another from 1998. I jut got some 2002 date $20s.. ei, they only need to print new $20s every 4 years
Of course, they spring around like no-body's business and are absolutely frictionless, but the concept is so cool!
Pictures at -> http://theducks.org/notes
Looks like it's time to grab the ole' smart card encoder and head over the pond... Has anyone even taken a look at the security on this?
Smartcard reader/writers have been available to the general public for quite a few years now (The Eltron 310 does full color card printing, mag encoding, bar codes and smart card encoding in one box for $3k), and you can find schematics on how to build your own all over the place.
01:36AM up 426 days, 2:46, 1 user, load average: 0.14, 0.11, 0.05
Alright, there is a small microchip in the card that keeps track of how much money is on it. What's to stop l33t hax0rs from tooling around with a Mr. Electricity Soldering Kit and changing how much is on it? Or better yet, an adaptor that fits into a laptop that let's you add cash with a couple of keystrokes?
There are no gods but ourselves.
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
They programmed it so that you can access the money at all times but you need to enter the pin to even see the bank account or name of the user.
Yes its totally anonymous.
The card is completely self containing; there is no communication to the bank needed.
You have a piece of plastic. Used as a debit, the transaction is completed immediately, as in, the funds are withdrawn from your account. Id used as a Visa/Mastercard, the funds take a few days to withdraw. Personaly, I would not use it as the supposed lack of security. Also, from the paranoid aspect, Big Brother could track every transaction made. Isn't that what our US Gov't is trying to do? I happen to like my privacy and to those people who say "well, if you havn't done anything wrong, you have nothing to hide." I say take a flying leap.
Your actions in life will determine your children's future.
I know this is funny but here is what actually happens at a particular club in Europe, Golden Dolls in Frankfurt.. You buy "Golden Dollars" (Note: not euros) with your Credit or Debit card, you insert said "Dollar" into lady's whatever. Lady exchanges said "dollars" back for real money at a house discount. Cash tipping isn't permitted.
See my journal, I write things there
We have these here in Germany too called "Geld Karte" (Cash/Money Card). They are mostly embraced by the Sparkasse, while most of the major private banks are reluctant to give them to you.
They are used for some aplications and there talk to add an age authentication system too them for the purpose of proving you age to cigarette vending machines. There is also talk to intengrate Crypto functionality so that you may digitally sign documents with them.
However in my mind the killer app would be to be able to use them cheaply for micro payments on the internet.
However to be widely accetable these would have to:
a) Be secure virtually - no electronic counterfitting
b) Be anonymous - Imagine Grandma giving the kids some money triggering an automatic I.R.S. audit. Let that happen once and they are out of buisiness
c) Be cheap. Real money is not for free either since there is considerable labor involved in handing out the money, accounting for the cash and buisiness has to buy insurance against theft.
d) Hardware has to be cheap too. By law the electronic signature has been available for years how every no one is using it since the cost of hardware is just too high. However with a cheap mass market reader there is no reason why this should no become as widely available as floppy drives are now (Sorry Mac Fans no pun intended). By the way as if did read that there is nothing TCPA can do which can't be done with a smart card reader, accept selling new hardware since smart card readers can be bought as an upgrade...
Currently there is one big drawback in all of these systems: All of them require the end user to bear most of the cost of deploying them (they have to pay for the class 3 reader and the smartcard), while buisiness saves a lot of money because processing is way cheaper.
A system similar to this was rolled out here in Sweden a couple of years ago - CASH as it is aptly named. Now, about 4 years later, it's all but dead since nobody thought it was a good idea. As far as I can see, the only thing people use these cards for these days is parking meters.
I think it failed here because of a few simple reasons. People here were actually smart enough to see that a major reason for the banks to try this approach is for them to make more money without any benefit to the customer. Doesn't it sound like a banker's dream? I can hear the banker's going:
- I've got a great idea! We'll make our customers keep all their money - including their cash - in our bank, but we won't pay them any interest on that "CASH"-card.
- Sweet! And why don't we charge them a small fee to obtain the card in the first place?
- They won't know what hit them!
Sure, it sounds great with a cash-less society, but until the system is free to use and has all the advantages of cash, it just won't catch on.
The anonymity of cash is attractive, definitely. And it's current durability is impressive, and in most countries guaranteed. But really, it's a pain in the ass. You have to finger through your wallet for the right notes and then you invariably receive a bunch of coins that you don't want to carry around.
Wouldn't it be mcuh easier to swipe some card that doesn't require a PIN, doesn't contain any personal info, is as tough as your VISA and doesn't require a phone/data call to some central service?
The database part sounds an awful lot like it could be used to trace transactions - thus not making it ideal when you want to pay off illegal labour, buy a car under the table to get away from state tax, or convert those drug millions you made on the street into something mroe useful than an e-card to you (i.e. a house, gold, bearer bonds).
e-cash will never take off until people can be 100% sure they can use it in dubious (viewed more or less illegal by the state) activities - like tax evasion, black labour, illegal gambling, drugs, etc.
Money still seems like a safer bet since it can't be backtracked - for a system like this to work they need to be able to see and check the transaction history (lest a Slashdotter will crack the card and start making his own money - thus they need to be able to check and verify all transactions so no "creative" money has arrived on the card).
Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
We have had a similar system in Switzerland for several years now (about ten, maybe a bit less), which is simply called "Cash".
I think it comes more or less standard with all bank cards, and it's free (techincally; maybe the bank charges for it as part of its general services, but the name "Cash" doesn't appear on my invoices.
I've been using extensively for the past year, and while it has some definite advantages, I don't see that replacing paper money for quite a while.
The good side:
- It's fairly easy to use; put it into a Cash-aware ATM (most are), transfer up to CHF 200 (ca. USD 150), and then insert it into a Cash-aware machine, hit "OK" and you've paid.
- No need to have the exact change anymore; very convenient for bus tickets.
The bad side:
- Not many places are Cash-aware: bus ticket machines are, some shops are (newsstands, for example), and that's about it...
- If someone steals my bank card, he or she can empty the card's Cash without any control; but since the amount is, at most, CHF 200 and there is only so many bus tickets one can buy, it's not that big a problem; besides, it works the same with paper money...
- Although quite fast, the system is not instantaneous: transactions can take up to 10-20 seconds; that's fast, except when the bus doesn't wait...
- As far as I know, the different national electronic cash systems are not intercompatible; hence, what works in Switzerland will probably not work with the French "Moneo" or Belgian "Proton".
All things said, it's quite convenient for small purchases and bus tickets, especially the "no exact change necessary" part. but it's still quite limited. Don't expect "Cash"- or "Moneo"-like systems to completely replace your paper-and-nickel money any time soon.
Stéphane "Alias" Gallay
Now, where did I put this witty quote?..
High-quality paper is always made with linen, cotton and other natural fibres. It is a common misunderstanding that "paper" is synonymous with "wood pulp".
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
For smart-cards, the most up-to-date information about how much money do you have in it sits in the card itself:
If you loose your card you loose the money you have in it. Whoever finds the card can use the money in it. (just like cash)
Also if you damage the chip in the card you loose the money in it. Same as if you burn some dollar bills:
Pretty neat, don't you think?
1: Secure chip cards.
2: Public key cryptography. This post assumes you know the basic concepts.
IIRC the protocol works (roughly) like this.
- Card 1 says "I am a genuine card. Here is my public key and a certificate for that key issued by the bank."
- Card 2 says "I accept your certificate. I am also a genuine card. Here is my public key and certificate."
- Card 1 says "I have decremented my cash register by $5. Please increment your cash register by $5. Signed: Card 1."
- Card 2 says "OK."
This transfers $5 from card 1 to card 2.Step 3 is the critical one. If that message gets lost then the $5 is lost as well. Of course a real protocol will include nonces and resends so that a single lost bit won't destroy your money.
This has applications beyond just replacing cash. People have been looking for a way of making small transactions over the net for years. These cards are potentially it. Plug a card reader into your USB port, put a similar one on a server somewhere, and you can purchase information off the server, paying by the page if you want. Conventional credit card transactions have high fixed costs. The costs on these cards are very low.
(Actually the server will probably have a PCI card with a high-speed, high-capacity version of the chip. But the principle is the same).
On security, PKC is the easy bit. Securing chip cards is much harder. If you can spoof a card into accepting messages from something other than a real card then you can forge money untraceably. To do this you either have to extract the private key from a card or find some other way to increment its cash register. Both of these need tamper-proof cards. The techniques for doing this are too many to go into here, but you need to worry about power supply signalling information about the processes going on in the cards, and random errors induced by putting the card in a microwave oven (no, I'm not kidding) giving information away too, in addition to raw physical attacks like stripping off the plastic and using very fine patch leads.
The biggest weakness is that any card is potentially an entry point to destabilise the entire system. I suspect this is the real reason for the $107 limit: cracking a single card would give you as an individual considerable wealth, but moving that wealth into the rest of the financial system by (e.g.) depositing it at a bank would show up in odd deposit patterns long before you could "forge" enough money to destabilise the economy. Also the individual who does this has every incentive to keep it quiet: not only has s/he committed a crime, but everyone in the know is a potential blackmailer.
Of course someone might find an easy crack and publish it. This is probably the worst case scenario. The only solution is to recall the cards and go back to cash until the problem can be sorted out. Again, the card limit helps put an upper limit on the cost of this.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Examples:
Salvation Army Bucket
The bum on the corner
The Hot Dog Cart
Birthday cards
Yard Sales
There are lots of stuff we just drop cash into. Going to a card will make these transactions impossible or too expensive to make it worth your while. Personally, I would not mind having something like this except I already have it....my debit card. If I am making a transaction I don't want the bank to know where I was, I get cash at the ATM. I guess I might be a terrorist if I don't want my bank to know I shopped at Bernie's Pleasure Palace and was buying porn or a marital aide.
Gorkman
No, it's "Verbing weirds language".
Credit cards were a major step forward, but no one really considers them, "the Mark of the Beast" - this technology though is easily transferrable from a card in the hand to more secure "retina scan money" or "thumbprint money" - think about how these technologies are already being marketted. Think about how MOST 40 and unders would think, "Wow I will never get robbed and don't have to carry around a wallet anymore!"
Leave it to the French to lead the way in a move towards the end by A) Not leading to fight AntIchrists (Saddam) B) Leading the way for the "AntiChrist's monetary system" to become a reality.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Can this be applied to anonymous voting?
Well Moneo is really a wide scale operation of the banks to get paid for what they can't now, namely the cash you carry.
Moneo works this way, with your credit card (visa/MC), your bank will offer you to subscribe to Moneo for a yearly fee (around 10 EUR/USD), if you do so you can load up virtual cash onto your credit card (smart cards in France), up to 100 EUR.
In order for a shop to accept Moneo payments, they need a terminal rented by their bank for a monthly fee. The terminal will accept either credit cards or Moneo or both. You give your card, the terminal asks for your choice of Moneo or Credit and you can proceed with the transaction. Please note that the bank receives a fee for each payment done on the terminal, this fee being paid by the seller. If your balance is considered low by the terminal you will be offered a reloading of cash onto your card, this is something that interest the seller as this time he will receive a fee paid by the bank if your reload cash at his terminal.
If we sum up the whole system:
* customer pays a yearly fee for Moneo.
* shop owner rents a terminal to its bank for a monthly fee.
* on each payment a small fee is paid by the shop owner to the bank
* on each refill the bank pays a small fee to the shop owner
* if you loose your credit card with moneo, the credit card might be barred but the Moneo cash can still be used (you might loose up to 100 EUR)
So the real question is, why not simply make shop owners accept credit card payments for real small fees instead of setting up such a system ? The answer is simple, because the Moneo system is all profit for the banks, not for the consumer or shop owner, the BANKS!
And in order to deploy rapidly the Moneo system, the german technology was choosen (Geldkarte, 56 bit DES crypto!!!!), which means no PKI and rather weak crypto.... But the banks don't care, it's not their money, and very often all card loss insurances will not cover the money loaded onto Moneo....
With all thos elements my choice is clear, Moneo, NO!
OK, so here's the rundown on it.
Postings belong to one of these categories:
a. Parochial bum
Std posting: " Here in Upper Slobbovia (or Ruritania, or whatever) we used this for well-nigh seven centuries, but not everybody(or everybody) uses it".
b. Yank yokel
Std posting: "How can it work if it doesn't do a central DB query every time? What if the DB is down? [after the slammer crashing of the Bank Of America ATM network]" (Because of the very primitive US banking system, yank yokels believe that the rest of the planet is as backward as they are).
c. Turbonerd
Std posting: "Goodness, in order to work properly and be anonymous one has obviously to do a QCM triple encoding for every non-null challenge in any transaction. You see?"
d. Impatient twit
Std posting (by the 300th time that somebody wonders how can you know how much money you have left on the card): " We have this device, see, where you put the bloody card and it will tell you how much bloody cash you have still left".
e. Know-it-all clown
Std posting: this one...
As a result, I don't know anything I didn't know before. I only know now that we live in a far more parochial and chauvinist world than I previously thought...
And yes, I live in Belgium and I have used the useless stupid thing which increases banks' profits zillions of time...
Thufir Hawat
Part-time Mentat
So, unless there is a "killer app" - like the parking meter - or universal acceptance (eliminating the need to also carry cash) I don't think it'll take over.
Great point. The only place I have seen something like this take off is Hong Kong, where the killer app is public transportation.
Once everyone uses them then your argument about always having cash turns around. If you have to carry one of these cards anyway then why not start using it, rather than messing arond with coins and such. Also most vendors actually prefer not to deal with cash (added risk and expense - unlike you they actually have to pay for cash handling services) so once all or most of their customers have these cards they have a strong incentive to start accepting them.
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.
The money is anonymous, but it's numbered.
A legitimate "add cash" operation leaves a record in the database.
When the user tries to pass the counterfeit card, the database is checked and when it finds, for example, that "card 0x8782a321=54.21" but the card says "card=100.00" the POS terminal knows it's counterfeit. The integrated security camera clicks on, homes in on your face, and e-mails your picture to the authorities.
I like that. We in theory could do this now with old-fashioned bills. One camera (with a *very good* machine vision system) looks over the shoulder of the cashier. Camera one is looking at the serial numbers of the bills. Camera two is looking at the customer.
Camera one is hooked into a database that tracks the locations of bills and serial numbers (think WheresGeorge on steroids). If the system discovers a bill passed with SN that isn't in the database, or that is already in a till someplace else, the customer becomes a counterfeiting suspect. This obviously requires some sophistication. For example, a bill may not be in the till anymore, but if it left the till in Hawii, and enterred a till in Maine 45 minutes later, you know the bill in Maine is counterfeit. The program would obviously have to be updated if commercial hypersonic transports ever became available (!).
Such a system won't catch a counterfeiter every time, but the odds would catch up with him. A more cumbersome system that doesn't use machine vision and requires the cashier to run bills through a scanner could probably be implemented in a much shorter time. Building RFID tags into the money makes even better sense if they are robust enough, but ongoing passage of "microwaved" money would make you a counterfeiting suspect even if your money was being legitimately zapped..
I like this. It is, in some ways, the antithesis of "the beast" because they are numbering the money as opposed to numbering the people.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Digital cash is a terrible mistake:
- You can't loan someone 5 bucks.
- You lose privacy.
- Your card can be duplicated.
- A software or electrical error can wipe out your money.
These points counteract each other; if you attempt to solve one of them, the other problems grow larger.One thing that seems to underlay the digerati's love of digital cash is a lack of understanding about counterfeiting. Falsifying paper currency is difficult
Digital cash, shit!
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
Well, I don't trust banks. As soon as I get my check I convert it to cold hard cash and use it to buy durable goods that I can easily trade for other goods in an emergency. Frankly, with the upcoming global war I would recommend converting at least 75% of your income into ammunition and canned goods. Remember, if possible, try to stay away from large cities where the radiation will be the strongest. It is very unlikely the suitcase nuke bombers will target farms and rural areas and instead will concentrate on large metropolitan areas. You may need to eventually contend with crop dusters filled with biological and chemical agents, but if you invest in decent small arms you should be able to take them out well before they can cause significant damage to the surrounding area. Oh well, gotta back to digging my bomb shelter before they deliver the air filtration system next week.