Comment Electronic Purse is Already Done (Score 1) 463
Let's back up for a minute:
#1 reason for a country to go to an electronic purse is to eliminate the tremendous costs of managing currency. Think about the logistics required to keep money in an economy. It's not just "oh, ship $10 million USD to Las Vegas so peoples can gamble or whatever." It's an ENORMOUS HASSLE. Electronic purses are very tantalizing way to be far more efficient as a currency provider.
Banks and nations have mostly gone to a banking standard with a smart card providing a great degree of fraud protection for online transactions. "ONLINE" means anywhere a trusted network connection/payment terminal is set up. Done. Use a debit/credit card and any number of officious people can get that transaction information. Most of you guys and the girl reading this don't seem to mind this...
What you are attempting to discuss is OFFLINE transactions. This software is sometimes referred to as an electronic purse.
Bob wants to give Joe $10 for a cool Commodore 64 and there's no paper currency in the economy. So, Bob has his smart card and puts it into a dumb, untrusted reader. The reader device asks how much to transfer. Joe then sticks his card in and like magic $10 in value is added to Joe's card and Bob's is credited with no network connection. Can the transaction be fed back to some server? Depends on the electronic purse. Can you have a relatively anonymous system that works? Yes.
Lots worse privacy issues than this. It's just that it's not okay to talk about them. We got to protect ourselves from those Terrists and all.
Where's my mobile phone that is a pay terminal? USA is still in the stone ages making a killing with 'identity protection' schemes and magnetic stripes. Why? Banks make more money and it's pretty cheap.