Nom Description
Electronic Money Systems
  Je ne peu pas m'arrter de penser #5
A little comic strip that explains micropayments. See also page 184 and page 185 for a history of micropayments. The new economy rational is explained in issue 6. But there is also a Case Against Micropayments. That's not stopping Javien, a company that promises open source micropayment tools real soon now. The W3C is working on a micropayment protocol.
  Review of Payment Systems
Latest installment of an annual review of alternative payment systems. Reviews the hows and whys, and lists a number of different systems.
  WebFunds
WebFunds is an Open Source project to create an extensible payments system, i.e. e-Money and e-Wallets. The concept of the 'value' of the money is embodied in a 'Ricardian Contract', using strong crypto to authenticate. The system has been used with real money, although only small amounts of money appear to be in circulation (approx $100,000 USD as of this writing). The project has been running for over five years, and is now in its third revision. Java-based.
  E-Gold
E-Gold is a tradeable currency backed by gold and other precious metal deposits. One way to think of e-gold is as a mutual fund for gold. However, it is no ordinary mutual fund, and behaves a lot more like a currency: that is, you can very easily give very tiny (or large) amounts of e-gold to other people. There is no minimum balance requirement: you can maintain a balance of pennies. There is a service fee, but it is minimal. E-Gold was designed and is really meant to be used as a (convertible) currency backed by hard assets.

Pluses: dozens of market makers make it easy to convert to and from e-gold; you are not dependent on one corporation for conversion. Simple open-source programming API.

  EZCmoney
EZCmoney is an electronic merchant payment system. Consumers can deposit money in an EZCmoney account, and then tell a merchant thier account number. Transaction approval happens by email. Customer-to-customer transactions are not currently supported. EZCmoney claims to provide a level of security that credit-card based shopping does not.
  Qchex
Consumer sends a 'check' to someone. Web-based, interface resembles a paper check. Option to send an 'email' check, or an actual paper check.
  Achex
Allows you to send a check to someone. Web-based.
  Ipin
Web-based payment system.
  WebMoney
No obvious way to redeem. No programming interfaces
  GoldMoney
?