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ransfer of purchasing power across electronic networks.
Both forms of electronic money are still in their infancy. Earliest versions, going back a half decade or more, aimed simply to facilitate the settlement of payments electronically. These have included diverse card-based systems with names like Mondex and Visa Cash as well as such network-based systems as DigiCash (later eCash), CyberCoin, and NetCash. Operating on the principle of full prepayment by users, each has functioned as not much more than a convenient proxy for conventional money - in effect, something akin to a glorified travelers check. Few have caught on with the general public, and many have already passed into history. (7)
More recent versions, mostly network-based, have been more ambitious, aspiring to produce genuine substitutes for conventional money. Most widely advertised in the United States (using Whoopie Goldberg as a spokesperson) is Flooz, a form of gift currency that can be used for purchases from a variety of web sites. Other examples include Beenz, Cybergold, and (in Britain) iPoints. (8) All can be obtained by means other than full prepayment of conventional money, usually as a reward for buying products or services from designated vendors. Like the green stamps of an earlier era or the frequent-flyer miles of today's airline industry, each can be held more or less indefinitely as a store of value and then eventually employed as a medium of exchange.
The difference between the earlier and more recent versions of e-money is vital. Earlier experiments like Mondex or Digicash merely added to the velocity of circulation - the flow of transactions using the existing money stock. Liquidity was enhanced, but payments still required settlement through the commercial banking system, debiting or crediting third-party accounts. Hence no fundamental threat was posed to the authority of central banks, which retained ultimate control of the clearing mechanism. With later ventures like Flooz or Beenz, by contrast, a potential exists for the creation of entirely new clearing mechanisms, quite independent from the existing money stock. New circuits of spending, based on alternative media of exchange, can evolve that make no use at all of a country's traditional settlement system - "rootless" money "circling in cyberspace indefinitely," as one source puts it (E. Solomon 1997: 75).
Though none of the newer units has yet been adopted widely, (9) smart cards and network money clearly have the capacity to grow into something far more innovative, given sufficient time and ingenuity. Certainly the incentive is there. Electronic commerce is growing by leaps and bounds, offering both rising transactional volume and a fertile field for experimentation. The stimulus for innovation lies in the promise of seigniorage: the alluring profit that can be gained from the difference between the cost of creating money and the value of what that money can buy. To coin a phrase: Money can be made by making money. That motive alone should ensure that all types of enterprises and institutions - nonbanks as well as banks - will do everything they can to promote new forms of e-currency wherever and whenever they can. In the words of a noted historian of money:
The companies that control this process will have the opportunity to make money through seigniorage, the traditional profit governments derived from minting money. Electronic seigniorage