[12810] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Failings of credit cards
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bruce Gingery)
Sun May 29 20:34:58 1994
Date: Sun, 29 May 1994 06:34:53 -0600 (MDT)
From: Bruce Gingery <lcbginge@antelope.wcc.edu>
To: John Curran <jcurran@nic.near.net>
Cc: Nick Szabo <szabo@netcom.com>, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <9405282357.aa24401@nic.near.net>
With the recent release of PGP v2.4 (commercial) and PGP v2.5 (freeware)
what is to prevent in-person exchange of public keys with a
financial institution for validation purposes. This exchange would either
be in conjunction with a DDA or credit account, or a "pass-thru" arrangement.
In use:
Amount, timestamp, and sequential transaction number
is entered encrypted under purchaser's private key
then financial institutions public key. External to this
SOME bank "routing" information is appended. Also internal
to this "credit block" is the debit-card or credit-card
equivalent account identification.
Order is entered with attached encrypted block and encrypted
using vendor's public key.
Order is sent to vendor.
Vendor decrypts and forwards encrypted "credit block" to
financial institution for "deposit", with an identifying
transaction number. Financial institution does whatever
processing it wishes to validate the balance for debit
or credit availability, and either "bounces" or validates
the deposit, and confirms the amount.
Vendor ships "goods" or "bounces" the transaction using
vendor's public key.
End of validated or bounced transaction.
So it leaves portions of the whole thing in the hands of financial
institutions... everything today seems to be in their hands anyways, so
it's not a worsening of the situation.
Bruce Gingery
---
bruce@TotSysSoft.com
lcbginge@antelope.wcc.edu
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