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Beaming Money
Wes writes "If you've ever dreamed of having a system like they use on Star Trek, where credits are instantly passed back and forth, this is it. PayPal, from Confinity will let you do that. Just sign up, load the software onto your Palm or WinCE device and go. If the other person doesn't have the software, you can IR-beam it to them, same as transferring money. Never fear if you don't have a handheld. An e-mail address will do just fine, but no money beaming. Sounds like a new payment type for eBay. "
First, digital money would be signed and encrypted, so it's not just a matter of catching the beam. That also means that a stolen pilot won't sync money with someone else's cradle. They would have to beam it to another palm and, I would expect, you'd want to put a password around that function.
Next, I believe you actually need to "load money" into these things. When you sync, you would tell it to load say $50 for "walking around" money. If you palm is stolen, this is the most you can lose. If someone beams money to you, you take your pilot home and transfer it back into your bank. There is no wireless connection to your bank or any way to get money to/from your bank except at the hot sync.
This is NOT like a "debit card" where the money is instantly transfered from your bank to theirs. It's more like a travellers check, where you withdraw the money and carry it around and then someone else deposits it later. They plan to make money off the float (between the time you withdraw the money and someone else deposits it, they will earn interest off of it).
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
> Citibank (and some other big bank, I think) tried a pilot (sorry) program on the Upper West Side of Manhattan a year ago or so. They replaced our ATM cards with "smart cards" that could hold cash, and got a bunch of vendors in the neighborhood to install readers. The smart card came with a little reader that would show you your current balance as well as your last few transactions.
/what/ the purchase was. And it offers pretty much instant transactions; a few seconds and it's over. It's pretty close to being crack-proof; about the only way would be to tamper with one of the machines in advance... but they sit along-side the cash registers, so you might as well tamper with that and take the money directly, especially since any Interac transfer is logged.
That sort of system has been in place all across Canada for several years now (like about 7 or 8). I's called Interac.
The only thing you mentioned that we don't have are the little readers.
Every single bank and credit union in Canada (there are 5 big banks, a handful of small ones, and a zillion credit unions) is in on the Interac system.
It's basically an ATM (bank) card that can be used for purchasing. Pretty much any store in Canada, from McDonalds to the international airports, to little mom-and-pop corner store, to the big department stores (Sears, etc) accept them.
You can pay for your purchases directly with the card; no signing anything, all you have to do is input a single 4-number PIN. The money, if available, gets debited directly and instantly from your account.
A couple bank machines also offer the option of transferring money directly to someone else's Interac account, similar to what this Confinity thing does (except that you can't carry it with you).
Sure, the bank knows where you made the purchase, when and how much, but that's it. They don't know
Like I said, it's been in place here since the early 90's, and is immensely popular. I don't have the exact figures on-hand but something like 30%-40% of all purchases nationwide last year were made over Interac, and it's growing by 10% plus per year.
Since every single banking institution in the country is involved, you don't have to be a customer of any one particular bank or have a special ATM card or anything. Any old one will do.
And, there are really only a very few (probably under 5%) stores/restaurants/whatever that don't take it. Even the government takes it for pretty much anything. I think taxes (Income taxes, etc) are the only things they don't accept it for... and there are plans underway to change that.
It's a great system -- to be honest, I've always wondered why on earth they couldn't adopt something similar (or even the same system, to make things easy) in the USA.
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
"(...)And from that point on, robbers had Palm Pilots in their equipment, along with switchblades and guns. When they robbed somebody, their usual words were: "point your Pilot to mine and beam all your money and nobody gets hurt"."
Extract From Galactic Encyclopedia, May 2010.
Dont forget the fact that we (U.S.A.) have a chubby, womanizing captain and a first officer incapable of experiencing emotion.