17 Dec
2003
17 Dec
'03
11:17 p.m.
This is a good point, although I think on-line systems are unlikely to be used for payments to private individuals such as in the scenarios I mentioned, because of the cost of accessing a centralized database for every transaction.
The cost of communications on the internet is extremely low, and the cost of doing a single database query is also. An initial cost for facilities only should be able to start out, right now today, at less than 2 cents per transaction. Eric