DigiCash NV and Deutsche Bank AG are to launch a joint pilot project to test the use of electronic cash on the Internet. Deutsche Bank customers with Internet access will be able to use DigiCash’s electronic coins to pay for anything from magazine articles to share prices, database searches and pizzas from companies offering these services over the Internet. Users will not need any additional hardware or boards other than their personal computer and access to the Internet, DigiCash said. Users will connect to Deutsche Bank’s Internet site and download digital coins onto their personal computer’s hard disk, thereby debiting their accounts. These coins can later be used as needed to pay on the Internet with a single mouse-click. Barclays Bank Plc said it did not intend to offer a similiar electronic money service for now. We are not planning to offer ecash-type services at this stage, although we have not ruled it out, the bank said. We are currently trialing an on-line personal computer banking service and will be determining the success of that first before we look at electronic cash. The service was launched in February to around 2,500 customers, enabling them to pay bills, transfer funds from one account to another, create standing orders and obtain balance details and interim statements. Like cash, ecash offers consumers true privacy in what they buy. Yet users can recover their money if their computer crashes, and also have means of proving who received their electronic cash in payment, making it unsuitable for criminal use. Thus electronic cash brings an improved form of cash to cyberspace, where it can be expected to catalyse an enormous growth in electronic commerce, enthused David Chaum, founder and chief executive of DigiCash. In April DigiCash teamed up with Herndon, Virginia-based PSInet Inc’s Internet service provider acquisition EUnet Ltd, in order to offer the electronic cash system in Finland. The technology gives small payments of a few cents the same security as high- value transactions are given.
