Business 2.0: Citigroup to Push Ecash into Primetime. Citigroup and America Online certainly know about consumers. They are, after all, the world's leading financial institution and the top online service provider. Now the two bet that by joining forces, they can bring electronic-payment services into the mainstream... By 2005, market-research firm Ovum predicts, e-payment transactions will exceed $2.2 trillion... c2it will be free to users for the first three months, after which it will cost $2 for each person-to-person transaction. http://www.business2.com/content/channels/ebusiness/2000/11/28/23068 SJ Mercury: Jumping on bandwagon of eBay criticism. There's reason to believe -- maybe not now, but soon -- that eBay's $170 million acquisition of Billpoint, its online bill-payment service, may need to be re-examined. In the worst case, some people are predicting that eBay may even consider selling it.... A month ago, PayPal began imposing charges on sellers of 1.9 percent plus a 35-cent transaction fee, not unreasonable in the credit card world. And in a case of one company zigging while the other zags, Billpoint has suspended its ordinary 2.5 percent seller charge for Visa users over the holidays in an effort to gain market. http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/columns/front/docs/sh112700.htm From: http://www.tomalak.org/todayslinks/newsletter.html --- <Snippage> --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'