I wonder at times, if the reason we're seeing such slow progress in automation of payments in the United States is *not* so much in the deficiencies of some particular layer of the stack (PKI etc).
The inhibitor is that individuals and small business have never had any capability whatsoever to conduct business from end to end, with their customer and supplier or even banks, without delegating too much function to untrustworthy intermediaries and components. I know that's an old theme but it applies to the whole transaction lifecycle, not just your settlement activity. (ref. Open EDI ISO 15944:) Rule 39: Conceptually a business transaction can be considered to be constructed from a set of fundamental activities. They are planning, identification, negotiation, actualization and post-actualization. http://www.tieke.fi/sc32wg1 and the doc. is number N241. Again, that is another old theme. The transaction lifecycle. I think those guys neglected the advertising and demand creation stage, prior to any discovery phase. If anybody is further interested in this thread, I put some thoughts about end-to-end on my website below (this website is just a bunch of personal essays... ) http://www.gldialtone.com/end2end.htm TOdd Todd Boyle CPA 9745-128th Ave NE Kirkland WA International Accounting Services, LLC 425-827-3107 editor, AR/AP everywhere www.arapxml.net
