Credits and debits on the Internet

Abstract

Since the advent of banking in the Middle Ages, bank customers have used paper based instruments to move money between accounts. In the past 25 years (1972-97), electronic messages moving through private networks have replaced paper for most of the value exchanged among banks each day. With the arrival of the Internet as a mass market data network, new technologies and business models are being developed to facilitate electronic credit and debit transfers by ordinary consumers. These new systems include CyberCash (which is a gateway between the Internet and the authorization networks of the major credit cards) and the Secure Electronic Transactions protocol (a standard for presenting credit card transactions on the Internet), as well as First Virtual (a way of using e-mail to secure approval for credit card purchases of information), GC Tech (a payment system that can use credit or debit via an intermediation server), and NetBill (a public private key encryption system for purchasing information).