- Ecash
Using cryptography, ecash was introduced by
David Chaum as an anonymous electronic cash system. He usedblind signature s to achieve unlinkability between withdrawal and spend transactions. [David Chaum, Blind signatures for untraceable payments, Advances in Cryptology - Crypto '82, Springer-Verlag (1983), 199-203. [http://dsns.csie.nctu.edu.tw/research/crypto/HTML/PDF/C82/199.PDF (PDF)] ] Depending on the properties of the payment transactions, one distinguishes between on-line and off-lineelectronic cash . The first off-line e-cash system was proposed by Chaum and Naor. [Chaum, D., Fiat, A., and Naor, M. 1990. Untraceable electronic cash. In Proceedings on Advances in Cryptology (Santa Barbara, California, United States). S. Goldwasser, Ed. Springer-Verlag New York, New York, NY, 319-327. [http://dsns.csie.nctu.edu.tw/research/crypto/HTML/PDF/C88/319.PDF (PDF)] ] Like the first on-line method, it is based onRSA blind signature s.In the United States, only one bank implemented ecash, the Mark Twain bank, [ [http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/199510/msg00062.html Mark Twain Bank Launches Ecash] ] and the system was dissolved in 1997 after the bank was purchased by Mercantile Bank, a large issuer of credit cards. [ [http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-215150.html DigiCash loses U.S. toehold] ] Similar to credit cards, the system was free to purchasers, while merchants paid a transaction fee.
In Australia ecash was implemented by The St. Georges Bank, but the transactions were not free to purchasers. In June 1998, ecash became available through Credit Suisse in Switzerland. It was also available from Deutsche Bank in Germany, Bank Austria, Finland's Merita Bank/Eunet, Sweden's Posten, and Den norske Bank of Norway.
"ecash" was a trademark of
DigiCash , which went bankrupt in 1998, and was sold to eCash Technologies, which was acquired by InfoSpace in 2002.References
External links
* [http://web.archive.org/web/19961102121426/digicash.com/publish/ecash_intro/ecash_intro.html An introduction to ecash (1996)] (via [http://web.archive.org web.archive.org] )
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