ATM For Anonymous Online Payments

prichardson writes "The New York Times has an article about a way to anonymously transfer cash online (NYT registration required)." The inventor, Carl Amos, believes the target market for his newly-patented 'Aunty IM' ATM machine "..might be teenagers.. [who] do not usually have their own credit cards, they usually have cash and are more than willing to spend it to download music or games", as well as "those who were worried about identity theft on the Internet, or who simply wanted the privacy it provided."

Comments

Yay

[B3ryllium]

Now we can secretly fund the legal defense of mp3ers and linux users ...

Power to the people! Vivé la transaction!

Money Launderer's dream

[L. VeGas]

'nuff said

Going to need alot of work

[isotope23]

I can see the US government blowing a gasket
about quick and easy anonymous money transfer...

Re:Too Much Freedom?

[Lord Kholdan]

Ok, I'm normally a big proponent of identity freedom on the internet, but I'm having a little trouble justifying this one. I think you need to be able to trace the money trail. I just think there are too many bad uses to justify the few good ones.

How about the fact that it's no different from cash?

Funny

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

The New York Times has an article about a way to anonymously transfer cash online (NYT registration required)

Why to I find this sentence funny ?

So, finally banking can be anonymous (yeah right, in your wildest dreams, but we still need to register with NYT?
No wait, you can't do do banking with a hotmail account ...

Re:This looks like a good way to fund terrorists

[alen]

The law is that if you transfer $10,000 or more to a financial institution it needs to be reported to the feds. Criminals will need to do a lot of micro transactions to pay their bills.

Re:This is old hat in Japan

[todu]

Hmm.. How very innovative of the inventor. So an "invention" as obvious as this may exist in Japan for 20 years, and still the US "inventor" gets a US patent? Did the PTO know this while issuing the patent? So prior art is only prior art if it is prior art inside the US?

less here than meets the eye

[alizard]

This requires that ATMs be retrofitted or custom-built to handle inputs of cash, and that banks be willing to handle cash transfers from individuals to individuals and be willing to accept a far lower ATM reliability level and increased service/maintenance costs at the same time. (i.e. if the cash ID/counting machinery is down, so's the machine)

The potential profits are too low for the risks involved. Also, there are already ATMs that have been retrofitted to accept cash for the purpose of paying bills for defined (telco, utility) customers. Ever see one?

There are cheaper and more cost-effective ways to do this than via ATM, I filed a provisional patent app for one years ago.