Regrettably, "plastic money" is mostly the only, and in all cases the least costly payment form. And most reliable procedure - secure for both sides, buyer and seller - is to send the details from the card holder (often on kind of a voucher or print-out register form), i.e. card number, expiry date, order confirmation, and signature (!), separate from any (emailed) order, by Snail. Disadvantage: both parties have to have to do with one of the big bank/ credit card co's; which *is* an accessibility problem, even in "developed" countries - Western Europe shows a credit card "penetration" of less than a quarter of housholds (not to speak of Africa). The alternative, presently hard pushed by "the industry" (in fact, sales *"services"*), is worse: The introduction of "secure" money transfer procedures via the net will securely have the invasion of even more exclusive "security" and excluding privatisation measures into the *public* (i.e. open) net. And it implies surrender of even this realm - including very detailed insight of individuals' consumption behaviour - to the banking system. So that's definitely a no-no. In Europa, even to Eastern Europe - and astonishingly in most francophone Africa - the old-fashioned, (former) public service of Postal (Giro)Account still works reasonably well and in any case with less outrageous fees and much faster than the private banks. // Heimo Claasen // <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> // Brussels 1999-10-20 HomePage of ReRead - and much to read ==> http://www.inti.be/hammer To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies.
