One point worth noting is that the 5% cut used to be a typical fee for credit-card transactions. However, that cut only happened once per purchace, whereas digicash may incur this fee many more times. When I daydreamed about setting up a digicash issuer, I was thinking on the lines of a 2% fee for converting real money into digicash, then refunding any excess beyond cost of operations at the end of the year. Converting from real money to digicash is the most risky part of operations, so reserves should be proportional to this. Since my fantasy bank has a policy of not paying interest on digicash accounts, and keeping all assets in cash on (at worst) overnight deposit, this keeps things really safe. BTW, since I've got an aunt who lives in St. Brelade, the bank is in St Helier, Jersey, which has the great advantage of being one of the few Tax Havens to be able to get the Archers on FM. Simon