Everyday Digital Money

Electronic Money: Flop or a New Run-Up?

Hugo Godschalk, PaySys Consultancy

What people are calling “digital money” today is nothing else but “old” money which can be accessed through digital instruments. The value is not stored on an electronic device (chip, magnetic stripe, pc or elsewhere) but is still registered at a traditional account at a bank or at an other provider. So only the access instruments to the funds are digital, not the money itself. On the other hand, almost all the account based funds should be digital money because the registration of the account information is not written in the books (scriptural money) but stored as bits and bytes.

But there was a real invention in monetary history and evolution. It was the electronic purse, a specific string of information with a monetary value stored in the chip of a card or on the hard disk of a pc, which could be directly transferred from person-to-person without the existence of an account. Developed in the early 90s as revolutionary concepts of a new monetary order which could mean the end of the worldwide central bank monopoly of the old cash. After a period of innovation and euphoria (1990-1995), central banks started to domesticate the digital cash by regulation (1995 – 2000). The forerunners of internet based e-purses, like Mondex and Digicash failed. Only card-based products survived in the market, until now a niche product in European and Asian markets kept under highly surveillance of the monopolists of the “old” money.

The period from 2000 until now could be seen as the period of disappointment, but also of re-egineering. Non-banks like telcos started to issue “new” account-based emoney regulated in Europe as “e-money-institutions”. But real innovations like emoney are still lacking which could be (anonimous) transferable from person to person or new digital “numeraires” (as a new private currency not nominated in state money units like $ or €). Most of the private money issuance (like the “Regio” money in Germany) is still based on traditional money (cash or scriptural money).

The focus of this presentation is the “history” of real digital money, its regulation and its potential for a new run-up.

About the author

Hugo Godschalk, a native Dutchman from Den Haag (1957) has been living and working in Germany for over 30 years. Following his PhD in economics from the University of Münster in 1982, he started his career in the payments industry at the Gesellschaft für Zahlungssysteme (GZS; now part of First Data International), last as head of the business administration. From 1990 on, he worked for 3 years as a senior consultant for Ordina (Germany) GmbH, covering payment and card business related topics. Since 1993 he has been managing director and partner of PaySys Consultancy (Frankfurt), a consultancy specialised in card business (www.paysys.de). Since 2000 he represents the European Payments Consulting Association (EPCA) as director (www.epca.de).

Other assignments:
• Expert Member of the Payment Systems Market Group of the European Commission
• Member of the advisory board of the Payment Data Bank Paycomm (www.paycomm.org)
• Member of the committee of experts of the national network of Regiogeld initiatives in Germany

After 5 years (1979 – 1984) of scientific research and teaching at the Institute for money and currency at University of Münster with main topics in the area of payment innovations and electronic money his academic focus is still at monetary innovation and reforms as well as monetary history of private money during the Great Depression. The results were published in various books and articles and presented at national and international conferences.

Contact information: Dr. Hugo Godschalk; PaySys Consultancy GmbH; Im Uhrig 7 60433 Frankfurt; Tel: germany – 69 – 951177 0; Telefax: germany – 69 – 521090; Email: hgodschalk [at] paysys.de

The Real Pound Project

Peter Etherden, Cliff’s End Signalling Company

Studies of usury and the public response to the abuse of money suggest centralised systems are undesirable for  the management and control of the issue of coinage (metal, paper & digital). Academic study is needed into the structure and modus operandi of decentralist Mints and Exchanges serving the money needs of ordinary people in the real economy.

The Real Pound Project was first at the Radical Consultation in September 2001. The paper is the third of six research papers…the others are Birmingham as Number One (1986), The Wealth of CountiesEnergy Currencies (2006) and The Future of Local Money (2008). A sixth paper on The Doctrine of Usury based on historical research into public usury policy is due out next year.

Decentralised public and private mints and exchanges conduct their business in a structure of legal statutes such as the Usury Law of 1571 or the Legal Tender Act of 1862. Money is political and the division of power and means of enforcement are in the small print. The paper explores the way The Real Bank of Wiltshire might operate under licsence from a publicly accountable Real Bank of Wessex.

Sources

All papers available online at
http://www.cesc.net/serifweb/scholars/shepherd/irvine/manuscripts/

Writings on the Real Economy by William Shepherd

1. Birmingham as Number One (1986)
2. County Wealth (2001)
3. Real Bank of Wessex (2001)
4. Energy Currencies (2006)
5. The Future of Money (2008)
6. The Doctrine of Usury - available 2009

Historical Research edited by Peter Etherden

1. Usury and the English Church by Henry Swabey (2008) -  http://www.cesc.net/serifweb/scholars/swabey/ 
2. Wilson’s Discourse Upon Usury by R.H. Tawney (2008) - http://www.cesc.net/serifweb/scholars/tawney/ 

William Shepherd’s Blogs

1. What I Do All Day (2006) - http://williamshepherd.blog.co.uk 
2. Shepherd on Climate (2007) - http://climate.blog.co.uk

About the author

Peter Etherden is a radical economist who writes under the nom de plume of William Shepherd. For 25 years he has been a regular contributor to the London-based political journal Fourth World Review. In 1993 he co-founded the Cliff’s End Signalling Company, an independent policy and strategy development forum. cesc maintains a website for discerning radicals and publishes the work of cesc scholars.

Money 2.0

Michael Linton, Open Money

Innovation in money is really quite rare.   While the carrier (the medium) is increasingly digital, almost all the money itself (the message) is still massive and substantial in nature, a commodity supposed to carry value in itself - limited quantity, goes anywhere, issued by authorities - money 1.2, 1.3 maybe, but still money 1.n.  It's still simply stuff.   And definitely "their" money, not ours.

The value in a 1.n money is intended to be in the money itself, not in the users.  That's how it works.

But consider the consequent patterns.  Our income comes from anywhere, our spending goes anywhere.   The "original" sources and "end" destinations are all well out of our reach and completely beyond our control.  And this is true for all - people and organizations alike - we don't know where the money we spend is going, and we don't know where it's coming from.  Most problematically, we don't know whether it's going to continue coming.  These are the realities of markets confined to money 1.n.    It is not healthy that we are all so driven.  Fortunately there are other possibilities.

As with web 2.0, so money 2.0 is emergent from the context of information systems.  Money 2.0 is information, not mass or commodity.  It measures, it moves and it is a social agreement.  Both as individuals and organizations, we can create our own community currencies with each other - monies that will circulate within our networks, communities, associations.

And it's only "with each other" that community currencies can work.  The private currencies proposed by Hayek and corporate currencies like AirMiles (m$ &  goo$ maybe?) are going to succeed and/or fail not so much on the status of the issuer, as on the quality of the community of users.  The most productive forms will be those most compatible with the medium, and the needs and purposes of the users will be much more important than those of the corporation.

The term "open money" applies to the field of opportunity for such community currencies, which will be realised / expressed in forms of socio-economic neo-tribalism.

Money cultures and technologies will co-evolve more rapidly beside and beyond the established structures than within them.  Mobile technologies for money - MPESA, OBOPAY for instance - are establishing in the developing world where landlines and conventional banking are unrealistic.  Before any such systems were released for "real" money between "real" users and "real" bank accounts, you can be sure they were tested on virtual users and virtual banks, and moved virtual money.   Systems that can support "real" money can readily support other currencies in parallel - how long before we have chips with everything?

The ability to move discrete currencies through the supply chain will have many applications.  It will for instance make agreements - such as that between Burger King and Florida tomato pickers for a retail price hike to pass through to the farmgate - much easier to implement and monitor, to "follow the money" and make sure it indeed goes where it is intended.  Virtual currencies can also track the accumulation of carbon and other environmental costs, as in the BT Carbon Disclosure project and recent developments in product labelling in Japan and will likely provide the infrastructure for such urgent initiatives as TEQS.

From theory and projection to the matter of practical demonstration.  The community way program (youtube video) - is a general application intended to not only do what it does - raise funds for community needs - but also act as ignition for local / regional open money development collaborations.  It is designed for anywhere with a population over 100,000 (or less), for anyone with access to internet (direct or indirect), anytime they're ready (almost).    All parts are well tested and the whole has been verified under adverse conditions, occasionally and briefly.

Until very recently, we could not provide on-line multi-currency accounting support to remote communities - local independent services and operations were required, with varieties of complications.  And, until such independent networks can be linked, the benefits of applications like community way programs are mainly available to smaller businesses operating in single markets, as larger corporations are active in widely distributed markets.

However, recent open money systems and software development now provide for global networks, and so open many possibilities for major corporations.  If time allows I will speak briefly about some of these, and particularly about community development funding models that bring the ethics and purposes of microcredit to the context of money 2.0.

About the author

Michael Linton, not formally educated as an economist, has been active in the development and implementation of virtual money systems since 1982 - LETSystems and related tools in particular.

French Revolving Credit: History of a Success Story

Hélène Ducourant, University of Lille I

The proposition I submit is rooted in a wider problematic. How have informal payment facilities between merchants and clients in France turned into a consumer credit’s market? How have credit practices based on trusting relationships (or dependency relationships) developed into for-profit firms using impersonal and rational criteria of client selection? And what are the effects of these credit innovations on household credit use?

In this talk, I will focus on a particular moment of the French consumer credit history: the very beginning of the wide development of revolving credit which occurred between in the late 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. During this time, a new French consumer credit company launched- a large scale revolving credit with two innovations: The use of the credit is no longer restricted to a single chain of shops, but the money from the revolving credit can be used wherever people want, through money transfers from the revolving credit to personal account. This new revolving credit is a “home shopping” credit to unknown people. (There is no credit bureau in France, each company has to develop a system of clients’ selection based on information asked to the credit candidates about his/her personal situation to create its score.) Contrary to the practices of that time on the French market, it is no longer a credit to a household as “client of a chain of shops”, or as “previous clients of the credit company from hire-purchase operations”.

I will show how this new challenge contributed to the success of revolving credit. By the profitable uses of this credit the company managed to arouse, it is said to have “opened the eyes of the market” to the potential of revolving credit in France. I will develop two points: How this new challenger innovation can be explained through the functioning of the French consumer credit market. Indeed, a new challenger had no choice but to take risks in order to penetrate the market at the end of the 1980s.  Thus, the risk was in proposing the credit to unknown people by home shopping, without attracting all the “lemons”. How this innovation creates new uses of the revolving credit in France. Indeed, the company attracted lower class people yearning to separate their credit transactions from their social relations, in order to escape the prejudice they often have to face and shame of borrowing money. Those people transferred more money from their revolving credit than previous clients of the previous revolving credits. They have massively used the revolving credit as a personal loan. That type of use creates more profits than the previous uses of credit revolving prevalent in France, such as paying the supermarket bills.

Nevertheless, this company didn’t expect to be so successful: it conducted business in this way due to lack of opportunities. Based on archives and interviews of executives of French consumer credit companies, the presentation shows how the “nomos” of the consumer credit market promote client’s new uses of a specific money, the one that comes from revolving credit.

Working paper

• Hélène DUCOURANT, « Le crédit revolving, un succès populaire », Documents de travail du CLERSÉ (Working Papers), n° 2, mars 2009.

About the author

Hélène Ducourant is a fourth-year-PhD student in sociology at the University of Lille I - France. Her research deals with the social construction of a market. More precisely, she explains how informal practices turn into a trade activity through the study case of consumer credit. She also teaches Sociology and Economic Sociology at the Sociological Institute of Lille I.

Credit Card Strategies for Living the American Dream

Timothy de Waal Malefyt, BBDO and Parsons, The New School for Design

This paper explores the practices and ideologies of US consumers as they employ credit and debit cards in their pursuit of the American Dream. From ethnographic research on credit card use for a major US credit card corporation, this paper discusses the way consumers first talk about their credit cards as a practical “tool” for helping them mediate and manage the range of economic transactions in their daily lives. However, a deeper analysis of their actual credit card practices reveals that their uses and purposes are not purely economic, but are cultural in nature.  In particular, they use their cards as personal, social and economic strategies for pursuing and maintaining the American dream of upward mobility, even as they attempt to manage and negotiate issues of class and identity in the social and cultural landscape.

This paper further reveals that the strategies they employ for carrying out their dream operate by constructing and negotiating symbolic and rational boundaries of experience.  Against associations of “freedom” that much of the credit card industry promotes, card users employ practices and personal strategies to organize card types (credit, debit) and card institutional associations (i.e., Staples, Kroger, Chase) into personal, social and economic pursuits (i.e., my fun card, my emergency card, my food card, and so forth). This practice reveals that credit card type, card association and card use, separately and in combination, help mediate symbolic categories of leisure, home, work, and play, as they organize pragmatic functions for daily living and future aspirations. In sum, this paper shows that credit card use among American consumers extends beyond rational economic practices to mediate and organize a symbolic world of lived experiences and aspired dreams.

About the author

Timothy de Waal Malefyt is Vice President, Director of Cultural Discoveries at BBDO Worldwide Advertising in NYC. He is also adjunct Professor in the department of Design and Management, at Parsons School of Design, (the New School University) in NYC. At BBDO, Timothy heads up an in-agency ethnographic consulting practice, which explores the meaning of brands and consumption for a range of clients in financial services, food industry, packaged goods, health and beauty, automotive, and digital communications and technology. At Parsons, Timothy teaches courses on advertising, design research methods, and consumerism and shopping. His research interests include design, marketing research, culture and consumption and the anthropology of business. His co-edited volume, Advertising Cultures from Berg Publishers brings together a collection of ethnographies which explore a behind-the–scenes analysis of the link between advertising and larger cultural forces, as well as a rare look into the workings of agencies themselves. Timothy is the recipient of Fulbright and NSF research grants to Spain. He received his PhD in cultural anthropology from Brown University. He is widely quoted in popular media, including Business Week, USA Today, The New York Times. He has also presented papers at The American Anthropology Meetings, the Society for Applied Anthropology and the EPIC conferences.

Digital Divides in Vietnam’s Emerging Market

Allison Truitt, Tulane University

How is the proliferation of digital monies generating new forms of connectivity? How does it lead to new forms of exclusion?   Economic growth in Vietnam has been propelled by new forms of mobilities—mobile phones, motorbikes, and more recently, the expansion of debit cards.  In the past few years, the Vietnamese government has aggressively promoted retail banking.  At the beginning of this year, the government mandated that all state officials and workers in two major cities, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, would receive their salaries via bank deposits rather than in cash.  People now access their salaries with debit cards via networks of ATMs.

Debit cards have been promoted by government officials as an instrument for expanding economic growth by escaping the constraints of cash.  Until recently, the Vietnamese mass media portrayed digital transactions as safe, secure, and convenient.  The rapid introduction of debit cards, however, has been widely viewed as a failure:  merchants have been slow to invest in point-of-sale devices, and banks have been criticized for not stocking ATMs with enough cash.  While digital money is strongly identified with Western technology and its attendant promises of modernity and development, why then are people so critical of ATMs?

In this paper, I am specifically interested in how people are making distinctions between cash and bank payments.  How do these distinctions relate to everyday conceptions of credit and obligation?  How are debit cards, much like motorbikes and mobile phones, generating new social identities as people become connected through these networks and technologies?  The expanding use of debit cards in Vietnam provides an opportunity by which to study new forms of subjectivities in an economy where mobility, once highly constrained by state-based regulations, is now being reordered in the name of economic growth.   

About the author

Allison Truitt is an assistant professor of anthropology at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.  She conducted fieldwork on the social life of money in southern Vietnam (2000-2002), and her current research interest is on financialization following Vietnam’s admittance to the World Trade Organization in 2007. Her publications include “On the Back of a Motorbike” (American Ethnologist, 2008) and “Big Money, New Money, and ATMs” (Research in Economic Anthropology, 2006).  In addition to her fieldwork in Vietnam, she has also worked with Vietnamese-American organizations in New Orleans.   

Why Mobile Payments Fail? An Analysis of the Swiss Case

Jan Ondrus, ESSEC Business School, Kalle Lyytinen, Case Western Reserve University, and Yves Pigneur, University of Lausanne

With the widespread adoption of mobile phones for voice and text messaging, a recurrent question is what will be the next killer mobile application? Many analysts, consultants, and researchers have focused on this question, and not surprisingly, mobile payments have often been identified as a good candidate. Being able to pay by using a mobile phone looks an obvious alternative given the fact that 80% of Western people carry a mobile phone with them, and the fast developments of e/m commerce and electronic payment systems.

Up to this point, only few cases of some success were identified in the mobile payments. Japan, South Korea, Singapore clearly lead the pack in the development of the field. Several countries in Asia offer mobile payment services that can be used in many purchase scenarios, such as manned and unmanned, remote and proximity payments for physical and digital goods. Even though, their deployed technologies and services offered are more varied and advanced, the usage rates are still low and will take time to grow. Learning from the history of credit card adoption, it will take time before the mass adoption of any new payment system is reached. In Europe and the U.S., most solutions have been launched for specific purposes (e.g. digital content, parking, vending machines). These niche markets ensure a relatively secure business case, but the growth potential of these mobile payments is limited.

The reasons why most Western countries have not been able to deploy mobile payments in a larger scale has not been scrutinized carefully, though it appears that the success of mobile payment solutions greatly depend on effective alignment between a business model and the business and physical environment in which it will be launched. Our objective is to examine carefully factors that influence the success or failure of the proposed mobile payment solutions. In particular, we will examine impending factors that lead either the failure of developing a robust business model or alignment or to the low uptake of the proposed solutions. We develop this study with an inquiry into institutional, economic and behavioral factors that shape mobile payment provisioning and adoption. To this end we identify and integrate three frameworks to analyze mobile payment adoption and diffusion. The first framework leans on the economic analysis of the mobile payment market. The second one looks at strategic and environmental drivers. Finally, the third one focuses on resources and business drivers that shape mobile payment provisioning.

We apply the frameworks to explore the failure of three separate Swiss mobile payment cases, which we have been following for about 5 years. Based on our longitudinal research, we confront the frameworks with our process and use data about the cases. We select one of these cases involving most extensive mobile payment trial data for more detailed scrutiny in the light of the frameworks to illustrate why it failed and how it misaligned with a number of critical environment factors.

About the first author

Jan Ondrus is an Assistant Professor at ESSEC Business School, Paris. He holds a PhD in Business Information Systems from the Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC) of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of Hawai’i and at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea. His main research interests are related to mobile payments, decision support systems, and technology foresight. His research has been published in journals such as Electronic Markets, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, and Information Systems and e Business Management. Contact information: ondrus [at] essec.fr; Jan Ondrus, ESSEC Business School, Av. Bernard Hirsch, 95021 Cergy, France

Facilitating Richer Exchanges Using Mobile Technologies

Tapan S. Parikh, Jenna Burrell, and Coye Cheshire, UC Berkeley School of Information

Several researchers have noted that all financial transactions are not simply discrete exchanges of value, but also carry rich meaning that is socially and culturally constructed. Current mobile phone cash transfer mechanisms only support discrete exchanges of either airtime or money, usually via an intermediary. Any additional information or sentiment must be conveyed via a "back-channel" between the sender and the recipient, often requiring a separate conversation.

This mechanism does not currently support all the exchanges that are socially and culturally valued. For example, in Uganda, one important tradition involves the regular sending of food to one's parents. Because the existing airtime-based transfer mechanism cannot convey this message of responsibility, migrants often must resort to buying food and sending it to their parents via taxi, incurring additional cost, but allowing for a meaning-rich exchange that is visible to the community. A recent study in Ghana found that 16% of remittances were given as food, and 23% as other goods [see Mazzucato, Valentina; van den Boom, Bart; Nsowah-Nuamah, N.N.N., “Remittances in Ghana: Origin, Destination and Issues of Measurement”, International Migration, 46(1), Mar. 2008, pp. 103-122(20)]. This is remarkable considering the relative difficulty and expense of such transfers. In fact, such exchanges form an essential part of the social safety net in countries lacking national support for social welfare.

Communications has a proven demand that could be used to bootstrap other services. Current users of communications services (often SMS) are likely to be the next adopters of mobile cash transfers. If they don’t own a phone, they must rely on their friends, neighbors or relatives with access to a device (perhaps using their own SIM card). A local airtime retailer could provide the service of sending and receiving messages, both text and voice (and perhaps also video). If this retailer also provides cash transfer, successfully sending and receiving a number of messages may instill the trust needed to use this more risky service.

Based on theory and a first-hand empirical understanding, in close cooperation with potential users and implementing institutions, we will design and implement a new set of transaction mechanisms to better support the practices we have observed. We speculate that some of these might be “rich transactions”, in that they support a richer exchange of information and sentiment then is possible using current mechanisms. A few preliminary examples: 

• Transferring non-cash goods, including food and other goods, possibly through local vendors equipped with mobile phones. In addition to fulfilling filial obligations, this could also provide local business opportunities. 
• Bundling of short audio (or video) messages along with the monetary transfer, explaining the intent and/or terms of the transaction. We could also allow responses, perhaps to express gratitude or reciprocity. 
• Reputation mechanisms for agents, allowing for more informed calculations of risk.

We believe that novel transaction mechanisms could better support the rich sentiments behind many socially motivated exchanges. Given appropriate institutions and technology (a local provisions shop vendor with a mobile phone, for example), such exchanges could also be handled more efficiently.

About the first author

Tapan Parikh is an assistant professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information. Tapan's research interests include human-computer interaction (HCI), user interfaces for semi-literate users, mobile computing and information systems for microfinance, smallholder agriculture and global health. He holds a Sc.B. degree in Molecular Modeling with Honors from Brown University, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Washington. Tapan was named Technology Review magazine's Humanitarian of the Year in 2007, for his work bringing accessible mobile information services to microfinance groups in rural India.

Designing a Joint Venture between Grameen Bank and Intel

Kazi Huque and Narayan Sundararajan, Grameen-Intel

In May of 2008, Intel joined forces with Grameen Trust to form a new standalone business dedicated to social and economic development. The Grameen-Intel Joint Venture seeks to foster sustainable solutions based on information and communications technology (ICT) to help rural, impoverished people improve their livelihood.

The joint venture builds on the “social business” concept originated by Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Yunus, who founded Grameen Bank in 1976 to promote microfinancing and community development. Launched initially in Bangladesh, the initiative couples Intel’s technical expertise with Grameen’s extensive in-country, grass-roots experience to address real and pressing needs at the village level. The venture focuses on building a framework for using ICT as the means to create an efficient marketplace, promote entrepreneurship, narrow the digital divide and — ultimately — help alleviate trenchant social and economic problems such as poverty and hunger.

The two companies envision a spectrum of innovative technology-based services that offer poor people the means to achieve a better life and livelihood. Their joint venture will work in tandem with microfinance institutions to facilitate solutions that capitalize on modern computing technology and Internet connectivity. Potential solutions include enabling rural villagers to sell products such as food and durable goods among themselves, and enabling people in remote areas to order medicine from a local hospital.

The presenters will discuss the business drivers that lead Intel to form the joint venture with Grameen.

About the authors

Kazi Huque is the Intel manager heading up the Grameen-Intel joint venture.  Prior to assuming his startup role with the joint venture, he had various management responsibilities in IT and finance. Kazi has bachelor of science in computer sciences, applied mathematics and an MBA from the University of Rochester.

Narayan Sundararajan is the Technology Architect for the joint venture.  Narayan's prior experience includes various new business initiatives in bio-medical and life sciences including new platform concepts for remote healthcare solutions. He has a bachelors in chemical engineering from IIT and PhD from Cornell University.

The Secure Digital Wallet Portal

Prashant Dewan and David Durham, Intel

Secure Digital Wallet Portal (SDWP) enables the users to manage their credentials for various banks, e-commerce websites, e-mail servers on laptops, desktops and MIDs so that their susceptibility to identity fraud is minimized. Identity fraud is one of the ways by which the criminals on the Internet steal innocent user’s credentials and use it for illegitimate purposes. Criminals can steal credit card numbers to buy things on the Internet and tarnish our credit history. It can take a few days to a few months with lots of pain for the owner of the card to recover from such misuse. In the extreme cases the damage done could be irreparable.

The concept of digital wallets is a decade old. The early attempts forced users to download software for each merchant; later the merchants started storing user’s information on the merchant’s sites thereby raising privacy concerns. Subsequently each merchant had its own data format leading to the Electronic Common Modeling Language (ECML) Standard (D. Eastlake, T. Goldstein, RFCc3106 - ECML v1.1: Field Specifications for E-Commerce, April 2001, Available: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3106.html). Moreover with the advent of near field technology (NFC) the same wallets can be used for traditional physical merchants and in online e-commerce.

Traditionally the e-commerce industry has used smart cards, smart dongles etc. for various forms of wallet applications. Besides adding to the cost, these hardware solutions are susceptible to increasingly smart malware attacks running on the user’s platform. In addition, more and more users are being exposed to phishing attacks. There also have been attempts to use single sign-on mechanism by certain web portals.

The digital wallet portal will be present on multitude of devices possessed by the user: laptops, to desktops, to cell phones etc. A user would be able to seamlessly transfer credit cards and digital money across different devices and use it for e-commerce and traditional commerce. The credit card information stored in the platform will only be transferred to the user-authorized third parties. The digital wallet will be protected against malware running in the operating system like key loggers, screen scrapers, phishing etc., resilient to social engineering, and can be made defunct if the device is stolen. Finally, it allows users to store e-tickets. SDWP uses ECML to populate merchant websites on user approval. In addition, it enables the user to validate transaction information before accepting the transaction and thereby safeguarding the user against phishing attacks.

SDW is based on security visor developed using CPU and memory virtualization to restrict illegitimate accesses to user credentials in transit and at rest. The access control is enforced under the operating system without modifying the OS kernel. More specifically the confidential information is encrypted while on disk and maintained in an enclave while in memory in a fashion that only an authenticated and validated code can access this information. Even the graphics rendered on the screen is under strict access control enforced by the security visor. The user’s information is stored on the user’s platform and shared only with the authorized services.

Digital Wallets are making a comeback especially in the ultra mobile platforms. SDWP advances the state-of-art by providing digital wallet usable across multitude of e-commerce sites and providing protection against platform resident malware and other forms of phishing attacks.

 

Security Challenges in Web Browsing: E-transactions

Subhashini Ganapathy, Delbert Marsh, and Glen J. Anderson, Intel

With significant increase in distributed data that can be accessed by various Web 2.0 applications and a variety of computing devices, the exposure of information to a wide array of threats has also increased. Also, these threats arise from many sources as an increasing number of hackers are driven by profit from identity theft. Many of the companies are focusing on going towards paperless transactions in an effort to go green.

As money becomes an increasingly digital construct and less physically tangible there is a need to ensure a balance of proper levels of security to protect a person’s identity and assets with ease of use and unfettered accessibility to their financial resources.

The focus of this paper will be on looking at security considerations for online transactions. The paper will address some of the perception of the IT administrators of companies with respect to browser security, based on data collected via semi-structured, on-site interviews with 25-30 IT professionals in the United States and United Kingdom across various business segments. The preliminary findings show that there is an increased concern on security from companies in United Kingdom vs. United States. UK more restricted in plug-ins and personal browsing. US more relaxed policies Field study also indicates that some companies feel that browser security is under control with the use of firewalls and anti-virus solutions. There is not a need to explicitly indicate that the browser is secure and safe. Some companies like the idea of protecting personal and transaction data. The paper will also demonstrate some methodologies to address the security concerns for these companies such as authentication of the legitimacy of the user and communication vehicles to satisfactorily convey and establish a trust relationship with the user of the system. Applying a human centered approach to security technologies will help alleviate problems associated with trust, usability and performance.

About the authors

Subhashini Ganapathy is a user experience researcher at Intel. She joined Intel in 2006 and began working in the Security Application Services group. Subhashini received her Ph.D. in Human factors engineering from Wright State University, Dayton OH. Her research interests include modeling human interactions on complex systems, decision making, information protection, model-based information technology systems, design optimization, and simulation and modeling. Her email is subhashini.ganapathy [at] intel.com

Delbert Marsh received his B.S. degree in Human Factors in 1995 from Florida Tech and his M.S. degree in Human Factors in 1998 from Clemson University. He joined Intel in 1999 working in an internal consulting capacity to design and evaluate internal applications before switching to his current role as a User Experience Researcher focusing on future home, office, and mobile product offerings in January of 2006. Prior to Intel, Delbert worked in aerospace doing interface design and testing supporting NASA, the FAA, and the US military. His e-mail is delbert.k.marsh.ii [at] intel.com

Glen J. Anderson joined Intel in 2004 and began work on implementing and evolving the U2PR process, first for the Digital Home Platform, then for the Digital Office. His interests include applied-research methodologies, mobile device design, online help systems, and patenting of user-oriented technology and methods. Glen received his BA degree in Psychology in 1987 from the University of St. Thomas; his MA degree in 1991, and his Ph.D. degree in 1993 in Human Factors Psychology from the University of South Dakota. His email is Glen.J.Anderson [at] intel.com

Money at the Intersection of Culture, Economy and Society: A Social Life of Money and the Inside Story of www.zopa.com

Bruce Davis, Freemarket

One day in 2003, a freelance ethnographic researcher found himself sitting in a converted barn nestling in the English countryside with the co-founder of egg (at the time, the world’s largest online bank) drinking coffee and eating cookies.  The topic of conversation was not the search for a new product or innovation, but rather a point of view.  After 10 years creating market leading innovations in the world of banking, Richard Duvall felt that he needed to step back and find a new point of view on the social and cultural change that he perceived to be going on around him – change which challenged his own perspective specifically on what money means to people in everyday life and what we value about money and finance.  What was the world going to be like when the dust settled on the internet boom?  What were the opportunities for himself as an entrepreneurial individual?

Egg had been an early adopter (in UK terms) of ethnographic research in the development of its products and services. Richard recognized the value of looking beyond conventional perspectives of ‘consumers’ and ‘needs’ and instead understanding the implications of the ‘social life of things’ – specifically what that meant for the meaning and value of money in an increasingly digitally enabled, individualized and changing cultural context.

While talking about my own experiences and the different ways that money was part of the creation and affirmation of meaning in the social and cultural experience of everyday life, it soon became clear that the ‘meanings’ of money were increasingly disconnected any idea of money being created and symbolized by banks, financial systems and macro economics.  Money and the value of financial services were not immune to the individualization of culture enabled by the digital revolution.

Working together with a group of co-escapees from egg, the result of these conversations was zopa.com, the world’s first social lending website - a site which allows individuals to lend and borrow from one another via the internet without the need for banks or conventional institutions. Described as ‘eBay for money’ it has gone on to attract more than $50 m in funding and launch in the UK, USA, Italy and beyond – with an increasing number of imitations around the world including prosper.com and …

This paper will tell the inside story of the creation of zopa.com and the ethnographic insights that inspired a completely new perspective the role and value of digital money in everyday life, and also how those experiences have been taken into other areas of banking, from sales processes, branch designs and new product development in UK, Europe, Russia and USA.

Richard Duvall sadly died suddenly of cancer in 2006, but he did live to see his vision realized and shared by 200,000 users in the UK alone and the launch of the site in the USA.

Links

• Slides presented at talk

About the author

Bruce Davis continues to work as a freelance researcher studying the social life of consumption, brands and of course, money. His clients include Unilever, Bacardi, egg, Royal Bank of Scotland, HBOS, Orange, Vodafone, GfK NOP, UK government (Treasury and Direct.gov)  – he has been a contributor to reports on the future of digital money for IPPR and digital consumer activism for OfCom (to be published in September). He lives near the Thames in London with his wife and 4, soon to be 5, children. His most valued marketing creation is Monkey Shoulder whisky – inspired by weeks of immersion in the UK drinking culture on behalf of William Grant and Son’s.  A drink that can claim to be the world’s first ethnographically inspired whisky!

Future of Money: New Rituals, New Pleasures

Daisy Ginsberg, Royal College of Art and Wendy March, Intel

At the end of 2007, a group of twenty five graduate students from the Design for Interactions course at the Royal College of Art in London were sponsored by Intel Research to explore the future of money. The students were asked to address the following question: As the technology of money and currency advances, how will that effect the social and psychological dimensions associated with those technologies? What new behaviours, new dangers, new rituals, and new pleasures could emerge?

The students explored how the abstract qualities and interactions of money and financial transactions might be made tangible and visible. How could they imagine possibilities to enrich money with personal, social and cultural significance? In this talk we will show a selection of the student projects and talk about the issues they raise, for instance:

Early Exit by Daisy Ginsberg
Would you trade Alzheimer's for breast augmentation or a luxury cruise? With an ageing population and an overextended NHS, you may find yourself alone, geriatric and diseased in your home, discovering new forms of "Care in the Community", ordering your food by rescanning barcodes on empty tins of spam and using a webcam to be diagnosed by your GP. So why not choose a cash windfall and a shorter life? Post Credit Crunch, Genetic Credit has given us unprecedented purchasing power. Gamble on your risky future, and opt for Early Exit: you can eliminate the risk of inherited disease and receive a refund for all the expenses you would have run up. Your life might be enhanced - but at what cost?

Half/Half by Dot Samsen
Half/Half is a money-adviser gadget embedded with a barcode reader and a direct internet connection to your personal money adviser. This adviser can offer you two types of encouragement: materialistic or anti-materialistic, depending on which ear you listen to your half/half with.

The Spectacle of Paying by Gunnar Green
The "spectacle of paying" illustrates the idea of visible gestures as a means of transferring and exchanging money face to face. The initial idea was to create a stringent system of specific gestures - each gesture equals a certain amount of money like notes and coins.  This allows people not only to adjust their transfer of money to specific situations, but also to communicate nuances of phrasing and expression through gesture. These paying gestures have to be choreographed beforehand, but the result is, the way of spending becomes more attractive than the holding of actual money.

Your Citigold Relationship Manager by Revital Cohen
With the transparency of e-money all of our secret, private behavioral patterns will become visible. Paradoxically, new freedoms often turn into new controlling strategies. By offering bespoke interactions between you and the bank with the aid of custom made bank statements and electronic devices, the service's aim is to establish a satisfying relationship between you and your finances.

Links

• http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/17/art-students-on-the.html
• http://beta.interaction.rca.ac.uk/fom/

About the authors

Daisy Ginsberg is an MA student in the Design Interactions department, Royal College of Art. Daisy studied Architecture at Cambridge, graduating with a BA (First Class) in 2004, and worked in urban regeneration at the Mayor of London's Architecture & Urbanism Unit. She spent a year at Harvard University as a Herchel Smith Scholar, exploring communication and narrative, returning to London to work for an agency specialising in social, cultural and spatial planning of the public realm. At the RCA, Daisy has been exploring the unexpected social, cultural and ethical impacts of emerging technologies, and considering how design research can be part of this process.

Wendy March is a Senior Designer in the People and Practices Research group, in Intel Research. Her current research focuses on the design of mobile devices. Wendy’s previous research has focused on Personal Digital Money and understanding the ways in which the design of money can reflect social values such as sustainability. She has also studied smart streets, the use of technology by teenage girls, mobile workers and the design of technologies for use by communities. Before joining Intel Wendy worked for IDEO Product Development. Wendy has an MSc in Information Systems from Brighton University, UK, and an MA in Computer Related Design from the Royal College of Art in London.

Navigating Future Moneyscapes

Scott Mainwaring, Intel and Camellia George, California College of the Arts

The People and Practices Research group at Intel has been exploring how technology could foster new kinds of experiences and understandings of money that people would find compelling and valuable, in a future of dynamic heterogeneity.  Our fieldwork targeted sites of cutting-edge monetary innovation from Nairobi (where money can be SMSed between mobile phones, bypassing the banking system) to Tokyo (where millions of commuters buy daily commodities with electronic cash on smart-cards).  We collaborated with leading scholars in economic and development anthropology in planning, carrying out, and analyzing these studies, and with graduate students from top design schools (Royal College of Art in London, California College of the Arts in San Francisco) in exploring methods of making abstract meanings of money visible and tangible.

Out of these activities emerged key themes and opportunities for technological design innovation.  First, one size does not fit all.  Support for multiple modes or levels of monetary literacy will be required, as there is no single or “best” practice with which to locate money in daily life, and the changing financial landscape requires on-going reassessment and skill development.  People will also need currency wrangling tools to juggle public and private money forms (cash, credit and debit cards, loyalty points, airline miles, gift scrip, etc.) and to create their own earmarks.

Second, people use money socially.  They consume financial services, but also produce them, at least informally.  Relational banking tools will afford flexible and socially appropriate management of personal loans, donations, and partnerships with family, friends, and valued groups.  Technology can enhance expressive consumption by providing new mechanisms to use money meaningfully, even when spent on mundane commodities, and new communication modalities through which these meanings can be read, accounted, and shared.

“Navigating Future Moneyscapes” is a short animated comic book sketching some possible future scenarios that illustrate how these themes and opportunity areas might play out in a day in the life of three characters.  Through allegory, caricature, and (we hope) humor, it envisions a set of future urban lifestyles, fads, and accessories through which currency wrangling, relational banking, and expressive consumption could take place in ways that address each character’s distinctive interests, fashion sense, and orientation around money.  The story is intended to shed light on our research findings, but also to raise questions about where different monetary innovations are leading, for whom, and in whose interests.

References and links

• Wang, Y. & Mainwaring, S.D.  (2008).  “Human-Currency Interaction”: Learning from Virtual Currency Use in China.  In Proceedings of CHI 2008 (Florence, Italy, 5-10 April, 2008), pp. 25-28.  ACM Press.  Available online at http://scott.mainzone.com/chi08-human-currency-interaction-china.pdf
• Mainwaring, S.D., March, W., & Maurer, B.  (2008).  From meiwaku to tokushita! Lessons for digital money design from Japan.  In Proceedings of CHI 2008 (Florence, Italy, 5-10 April, 2008), pp. 21-24.  ACM Press.  Available online at http://scott.mainzone.com/chi08-from-meiwaku-to-tokushita.pdf
• Mainwaring, S.D. & George, C.  (2008).  Navigating Future Moneyscapes [video].  Presented at the Intel Technology and Research Pavilion, Technology Showcase, Intel Developers Forum, San Francisco, 19-21 August, 2008.  Available online at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq9b6exq--c

About the authors

Scott Mainwaring is a senior researcher in the People and Practices Research (PAPR) group in Intel Research, where he conducts ethnographic fieldwork and design research to understand sources of technological value.  His current research interests include digital money and electronic wallets, resistance and accomodation to technical and social infrastructures, sustainable and reflexive design, and Asia and Africa as sites of innovation and inspiration.  Before joining Intel and PAPR in 2000, Scott was a member of the research staff at Interval Research Corp., a Palo Alto consumer technology incubator, where he worked on media spaces for lightweight communication, domestic technology research and design, interactive television, and the implications of the aging baby boom generation.  Scott has a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Stanford University, and an AB in Computer Science from Harvard University. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Camellia George was a summer 2008 design research intern in PAPR. After completing a BFA in Communication Design at Carnegie Mellon University, Camellia worked as a graphic and product designer in her own studio and for Fastback Creative Books. As designer for FCB she helped launch photobook products for Apple, Shutterfly, HP, and Kodak among others. In 2008 she finished her MFA in Design at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco. For her thesis research, Camellia employed ethnography and design prototyping to develop the Unfrigerator, an artifact from an alternative present critiquing the material culture of the American agro-industrial complex and how it structures our relationship to food. She will return to CCA this fall to complete an MA in Visual and Critical Studies concentrating her efforts on writing about how mass customization, and particularly digital fabrication, is part of an on-going futurist discourse in design.

Digital Money in a Digitally Divided World: Nature, Challenges and Prospects of ePayment Systems in Africa

Charles Bassey, Central Bank of Nigeria

Manuscript: bassey-digitally-divided-world.pdf

Modern society is characterized by a new economy, engendered by convergence of globalization and information and communication technology (ICT), riding on the backbone of the Internet. An important aspect of this convergence is that information has become codified in a manner that makes it possible for quick and cheap processing and distribution. In effect, information has become a dematerialized economic entity and a measure of wealth. Sadly, this new economy encompasses the vicissitudes of the old, magnifying extant “object gaps” with new and stringent forms of “ideas gaps”. The consequence is that developing countries (like those of sub-Saharan Africa) have to confront the twin challenges of technology inequality and income inequality with the uncanny option of devoting attention to fighting the former as a means to addressing the latter.

Introducing money as a dematerialized entity into the discourse of new economy, this paper discusses modern society as an autopoietic system, a lá Luhmann, and how the digitalization of its engine – money – strengthens extant inequalities as manifested in the observed disparities between developed and developing countries. This is premised upon the use of distance and space as tools to condition the dynamics of access and control which vast segments of human population are drawn into as they interact within modern economic system. In this wise, we see money as a specific form of value, around which institutions and markets have evolved. In exploring the evolution of institutions and markets around money, we also see how the place of money in human interaction has become strengthened within the contexts of exchange, ownership, greed, extravagance, etc.

Given the prevalence of digital money as an economic exchange, it is imperative to assess the effect of convergence of globalization and ICT on sub-Saharan Africa and how this convergence challenges, as well as holds prospects, for the development of an effective payment system. Except for South Africa, much of sub-Saharan Africa is faced with either a history of lack of information infrastructure or lack of large and functional domestic market for ICT, or both.  There is path dependence to the penetration of digital money into the payment systems of Africa. At national and regional levels, efforts are being made to work in concert with other countries within monetary zones to bridge obvious gaps. However certain roadblocks abound, bordering on political and financial governance, infrastructure, altruism and the gift system, money spraying, visibility, trust, among others. Added to these are issues of ideological disposition and enforcement of operational rules. Understanding these roadblocks and their dynamic nature is critical in developing effective payment system globally. It is the thesis of this paper that unlike the old economy, the functioning of new economy is dependent on existence of functional infrastructure upon which modern money institutions ride, given the power of time and space distanciation and its potential consequences on money relationships.

About the author

Charles Bassey (PhD, Sociology) is Assistant Manager, Security Research and Development, Central Bank of Nigeria. His job role involves security risk management, fraud investigation, security research and policy development. He has consulted for several organizations and evaluated projects on ICT, rural telephony, governance, etc, published in the areas of leadership and food security and participated in training of security personnel. He is a member of American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS) Association of Certified Fraud Examiners and International Sociological Association.

Ways of Sharing: The Mobile Phone and Money Transfers in Rural Uganda

Jenna Burrell, UC Berkeley

Resources that accrue to one person may become shared with others.  This is true of money and its true of material goods.  How this is accomplished has something to do with the material form of the thing shared.  Money can be subdivided and redistributed.  Much has been written of money as a force for abstraction and of its capacity for measurement.  In rural Uganda mobile phones have been successfully repurposed to facilitate money transfers.  This is accomplished by sending air-time codes via text message.  In this way, users have extended and improved the utility of the mobile phone in keeping with local needs and practices.  The informality of the current approach is especially notable, a compelling new materialization and extension of an important social practice.  While in Kenya and South Africa formalized systems exist (the m-Pesa and Wizzit systems respectively) this is not yet the case in Uganda.  The local logic of money transfer is part of efforts to cope with resource-constraints and reflects low-cost, lightweight solutions for daily living, insurance, survival, and risk management.

It is interesting to contrast the transfer of money with the ways in which the mobile phone itself is transferred and circulates in rural Uganda.  Unlike money the mobile phone cannot be subdivided and distributed.  Alternate ways of sharing are employed.  The phone is given as a gift where the whole object is transferred permanently into the possession of another.  Time-sharing and simultaneous use are other ways of sharing material goods like mobile phones that cannot be subdivided.  There are some notable patterns of gifting and sharing that have emerged with mobile phone appropriation in rural Uganda.  Mobile phone owners may formally or informally provide access to their phones to neighbors who load up their own air-time credit to pay for calls.  Owners sometimes generate a small commission in the form of leftover air-time credit.  Another observed pattern of mobile phone circulation is illustrated by public service announcements on billboards along the main roads in Uganda that warn young women against the dangers of ‘Sugar Daddys.’  These older men entice young women into sexual relationships with the gift of luxurious non-essentials like nice clothes and perfume.  The mobile phone is depicted as one of these gifts on the billboard.  “You might *want *these material things…but do you *need HIV?*” it warns suggesting the dramatic risks that may be involved in acquiring such gifts.  In exploring practices of sharing money and mobile phones my presentation will address questions of equity in the way the benefits of the mobile phone are distributed and what is exchanged for such access.  In particular, my larger purpose is to work towards refining a model of the ‘shared use’ of technologies that will be useful to other researchers.  While ‘shared use’ is already identified as the most economically viable option in developing regions of the world the dimensions of shared use practices and variety of ways of configuring this have not been fully explored.

About the author

Jenna Burrell is an assistant professor in the School of Information, University of California-Berkeley.  She is currently studying patterns of mobile phone appropriation in rural Uganda.  For her PhD thesis she conducted an ethnographic examination of internet cafe use in Accra. Previously she worked with a group of engineers, anthropologists, psychologists and designers in the People and Practices Research group, Intel Corporation.

Examining the Adoption and Usage of m-banking: The Case of M-PESA in Kenya

Olga Morawczynski, University of Edinburgh

This presentation will discuss an ongoing ethnographic study of M-PESA, a Kenyan m-banking application.  The purpose of this study is to analyze how the application is being used, and to explain why it is being used in these ways. The ethnography is being deployed in two locations: (1) Kibera, an informal settlement on the outskirts of Nairobi; (2) Bukura, a small village in Western province. Several interesting findings are emerging from this multi-sited ethnography: that the M-PESA application is helping urban migrants to maintain relations with their rural relatives; that the money sent via M-PESA constitutes a substantial part of the household income for the rural poor; that remittance and savings patterns are beginning to change as Kenyans adopt M-PESA; and that during the post-election violence, M-PESA facilitated a substantial change to remittance patterns.

The presentation will begin by providing a brief overview of M-PESA, and the two research sites. It will thereafter delineate patterns of adoption and usage, and discuss the aforementioned findings. The presentation will conclude with a short discussion of the socio-economic impact of M-PESA. 

About the author

Olga Morawczynski is a PhD candidate in the discipline of Science and Technology Studies (STS) at the University of Edinburgh. She has a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology Management and a first class Master’s degree in International Political Economy. Olga's research focuses on the diffusion and impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on emerging economies in Latin America and East Africa. Currently, she is using ethnographic methods to examine the adoption and usage of M-PESA, an m-banking application in Kenya. Her research has been published in several peer-reviewed journals and has been presented at numerous international conferences.

Digital Remittances and Salvadoran Modernity

 David Pedersen, UC San Diego

This paper examines the phenomenon of migrant remittances, focusing on the transfer of money to El Salvador by Salvadorans living and working for extended periods of time in several major US cities.  Over the past three decades, El Salvador has shifted dramatically from a country organized around agro-exports (coffee, cotton) to one now hugely reliant on remittances sent by a quarter of its population in the USA.  As part of this transformation, remittance transfer from the USA to El Salvador has become more formalized and regimented, with major banks, government agencies and commercial transfer services in both countries gradually increasing their direct role in the process. In particular, a variety of electronic accounting and transfer methods have replaced the technique of physically carrying the money across borders and holding it for recipients. This paper examines the relationship between these new technologies and modalities of remittance transfer and the way that remittance transfer has shifted from being understood popularly as a regressive crisis-driven informal activity of poorer rural migrants to become widely recognized as the central pillar of a financially sophisticated and "globalized" Salvadoran modernity.

Opening Keynote: Money in the Digital Revolution

Keith Hart, Goldsmith's College

An update of what I have learned in the last decade about the central thesis of my book, The Memory Bank: Money in an Unequal World (written 1998-9), concerning the potential for developing money forms more conducive to economic democracy in the context of the digital revolution in communications and the formation of a world society whose symbol is the internet.

Panel Discussion

Julia Elyachar, Professor of Anthropology, UC Irvine
Amolo Ng'weno, Senior Program Officer, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Paul Thomas, Chief Economist, Intel

Experts from a range of disciplines will discuss ideas and questions arising from workshop presentations.

Links

• Paul Thomas: Why alternative monies? (slides)

Closing Keynote: Re-examining M-banking: Linking Adoption, Impact, and Use

Jonathan Donner, Microsoft Research India