Re: Brands excluded from digicash beta

[mccoy@io.com (Jim McCoy)]

Paul Robichaux (perobich@ingr.com) writes:
> > Things are easy when you talk about your $50 Visa purchase or check,
> > but when you start to deal with clearing big aggregate sums through banks
> > things get real nasty very quickly.
> 
> Why clear big aggregate sums? Why not just clear smaller ones? Hell,
> why not use a forwarding engine that just says "this cash came from
> bank X" and sends it along?

I will defer to Eric on this one, but what happens is bank X does not seem
to respond?  What happens if bank X goes bankrupt between the time it says
"Yes that coin is good, pay user foo", and the time your bank goes to get
the money from bank X to settle it's payment to user foo?  Are you going to
clear every transaction individually, if so how much more will that cost
you than batching transactions?  What factors become involved when banks
start borrowing money to clear daily transactions among themselves?

Take a look at the process involved in clearing checks and you will soon
see how it can get very strange.

jim