[X] My Assistant

[DV8]

[DV8]

[Siege]

Which still happens today, although they are few and far between.

-Siege

[DV8]

Siege, credit cards, though being on the rise on this side of the pond aren't accepted at every establishment yet. And the same goes for bank cards on your side of the pond as much as credit cards have that problem here. We're all getting there. :)

[Siege]

Once we remove the existence of physical currency, I'd imagine even my favorite "beer n fingers" joint will have to start taking cred.

Hell, if Backgammon's idea about mini-credsticks with limited transaction capability works, it solves the last of my major complaints about the idea of strictly e-currency.

Although in the US there will be some cranky holdouts who don't trust the government, conspiracy theorists and so on.

I have to admit, the afore-mentioned "beer n fingers" place is the only example I can think of that doesn't take cred.

Even street artist booths are starting to take credit cards...well, the more successful ones anyway.

-Siege

Edit: proof-reading sucks /edit

[John Campbell]

I have to wonder where the stick form-factor came from. Given lack of a good reason to change it, it seems to me that simple inertia would keep the current card form-factor in use.

Of course, given that credsticks have, per SSG, the ability to transmit over short range, there's no reason that they should even need a standard form-factor, because they shouldn't need to be actually inserted into a reader. They can just do everything wirelessly. Given a decent public-key encryption authentication system, it should be effectively unsnoopable. Though, given the woeful state of encryption in the SR world, that might not be wise... of course, that could be equally well applied to the entirety of the digital monetary system.

Anyway, there's no reason that you couldn't build such a thing into a ring or watch or necklace or whatever other convenient-to-wear form-factor you can come up with. Remember those JavaDots they were going on about a few years back?

And, of course, for the ultimate in never losing your credstick, there's always the option of getting it implanted. Cybercredstick! Hook it to a datajack port, control it via DNI... it's a lot easier than messing around with whatever manual controls they put on the things. You can even route it to your Math SPU and have it accurately calculate and pay the tip automatically!

[TinkerGnome]

I thought the transmission beacon was just an ID tracker. You still have to slot the card to move cash.

[John Campbell]

Uh, yes. My point was not that credsticks do this by canon, but that, given their capabilities as established by canon, there's no technical reason that they couldn't be made to do it, and that they'd be a whole lot more convenient if they did.

[Arz]

[Backgammon]

Well, the idea is to not have the cred verification unit, which is hideously expensive. A discreet mini-credstick that only receives and transfers certified funds is what I'm talking about. The girl gets the stick inserted in her receiver (no apologies for sexual innuendo :P ) and *certified* cred gets tranfered. Later one, when she gets home or her pimp beats the crap out of her, the stick is plugged into a verification unit which validates that the cred you have is real, and it is transfered into a bank account.

[Siege]

Or the girls step to a credit verification stand when they come off the stage.

I still like the idea of the casual transfer concept. Although the now-infamous "Gold Club" used to have club dollars.

You bought x-number of club dollars which were charged to your card and you could buy drinks or tip dancers or whatever.

So options exist all the way around -- I'd imagine the pre-paid cash card (certified cred "stick") that's making the rounds here would be easily dispensed from ATMs and the like for people worried about flashing their primary credstick.

-Siege

[hobgoblin]

card or stick, whats the diff? all you need i sa place to put a 1x1cm chip that holdt a account number, a id number and maybe photo and a name. not to hard to do (alltho you can print the name and number onto a card)...

as for a money card, it allready exists in use on school grounds here and there, just replace the storage area for account info and so on with storeing the amount on the card. and when you "slot" the lady the account registerd to the reader will just drain an amout of the card. probably the card holder will see and verify the amount (alltho i recall a story about a porn site that drained credit cards of people, got told by the legal system to pay them back and sent out checks with the corp logo on (something like big huge sex site or something), feel like cashing that at you local shopping mall or bank any time soon?).

and if you replace the cash storage of the atm with a card dispnser it can hold say 3-4000 blank cards i think. and no reason to rob the atm as its all elctronic (no physical cash to run of with) so you can make it smaller and lighter :)

hell, im paying my bus fares this way. i have a card with aset amount on prepaid and when i go on the bus i hadn it to the driver, he enters destination and the card gets drained. its jsut a question of implementing it on a bigger scale (as in getting it standardized, and we just know how corps like standards)...