From hughes at soda.berkeley.edu  Fri Jul 30 06:59:48 1993
From: hughes at soda.berkeley.edu (Eric Hughes)
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 93 06:59:48 PDT
Subject: Paranoia and the Outlawing of Cash
In-Reply-To: <2C57B1BD@wk06.Copenhagen.NCR.COM>
Message-ID: <9307301354.AA09909@soda.berkeley.edu>



>In Denmark practically everybody has a 'DAN-card', [...]

Universality.

>[...] all purchaces, no matter how small, can be charged [...]

Arbitrarily small transactions.

>There is no charge for using [...] the card

Subsidized.

The Dan-card system uses dial-up authentications for a large part (if
not all) of its transactions.  The telecom charges are causing the
system to run at a large loss; this wouldn't be a commercially viable
system.  The Danish government is looking at making 'DAN-coin', which
would be a smart card system that relies upon the physical security of
the device.  Since no on-line telecom charges incur, the coin system 
will be much easier to deploy.

Eric