What is e-currency?The " E" of e-currency stands for "electronic";in which means the currency used on the internet related field just like email.There are several benefits of using e-currency service on the internet like
e-gold,
Paypal, Libertyserve,
alertpay and moneybokers.
1.The e-currency can be used on the internet related commercial applications such as shopping on the internet and doing personal investment via internet.
2.The using of the ecurrency services for example e-gold and paypal brings people a new way not to use their credit card as the only payment method on the internet since sometime there exists a big risk to provide your credit card information to the merchant you do not know them very well and most of them are far far away in the other side of the earth .
3.The ecurrency service companies such as e-gold ,paypal and EMO can provide both the buyers and merchant the convenient way to send and receive the payment just by clicking the confirm button and the deal is done.None of the payment methods in the world right now can provide this kind of efficiency capability
Types of eCurrencyThere are two major types of ecurrency in the world.The major different is their backed base .One is backed by precious metal such as e-gold is backed by gold .Another type of ecurrency is backed by hard currency like Paypal.Boht of them are all called ecurrency.
Digital Gold Currencies(DGCs) are a form of Internet money denominated in gold weight.The typical unit of account for such currencies is the gold gram or the troy ounce,although other units such as the gold dinar are sometimes used.Due to its rarity and durability, gold has long been used as a means of payment.The exact nature of the evolution of money varies significantly across time and place,though it is believed by historians that gold's high value for its utility,density,resistance to corrosion,uniformity,and easy divisibility made it useful both as a store of value and as a unit of account for stored value of other kinds.In Babylon,a bushel of wheat was the unit of account,with a weight in gold used as the token to transport value.
Just like the Gold backed Digital Gold Currencies (DGCs) .Currency backed Digital Currency is another type of ecurrency but been backed by the hard currencies .Most of those currency backed digital money are backed in USD and EURO for example Paypal,NetPay,EMO,and Stormpay.Just like the DGCs the DC has the same key function for using in the internet related commercial applications.
Pro and Con about different types of ecurrencyDC (here we mean ecurrency backed by hard currency ) is widely used in the internet as as the medium of internet related commercial actions.This provides those users a quick,simple and safe way for shopping instead of showing their credit card information to merchant who they do not know .But however DC is some how been restricted in some regional area which is defined by the currency they choose to be backed .The major reason is the floating character of exchange rate between the hard currency and the local currency often used by the internet users.For example, an internet user who lives in Japan may lose money when processing the currency exchange from USD to JPY if he does not watch out the international economics careful enough.
So most of the ecurrency companies backed by hard currencies become big giant that is just because the number of this kind of currency user is big enough .For example PayPal .But no one will guarantee if Paypal can do the same good job in the future hard currency such as RMB in China if Paypal does not provide RMB base payment service.
SummaryAs the allegro expandsion of internet economical applications ,the using of ecurrency will be the trend in the coming future just like credit card application before . But however there is no unified defination to the ecurrency service industries .For exalpme ,Will we define a ecurrency company as the bank service or just a finacial service firm ?This question remains gray area.
