In Search of Genuine DigiCash

[hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes)]

   Eric, what would that "few million for a good study" buy?  Might it not be
   wiser spent on a full-blown market test, using software prototypes?

That is exactly the kind of thing I meant.  Several smart-card payment
systems have been deployed in medium size cities in Europe as trials
to see just how much they'd cost in practice to deploy.  These trials
cost more than just a few million, but prototype implementations of
each of online and offline sorts of systems, complete with standard
marketing tools such as focus groups and limited scale deployment, as,
for example, inside an amusement park.

Whatever the actual figures are, there are too many of them now to
each side's benefit to say definitively what will be the best in any
particular market segment, even if some of the choices are clearer
than others.

Eric