This whole fracas between blind-sig money and FV money is a symptom of the confusion between clearing and settlement. Roughly speaking, clearing is when authorization moves (i.e. a liability is created), and settlement is when money moves (i.e. when that liability is discharged). Clearing should always happen at or before settlement. In order to do on-line digital postage, you need clearing to happen at the point of remailing. Settlement can happen at some later time. Settlement need not be in real money. The liability of other settlement facilities can be used. This is in fact how central banking works. Only the central bank moves "actual" funds; everyone else moves liabilities around. To wit, a remailer consortium would do best to issue a local banknote usable only by themselves and have customers settle with the consortium issuer, rather than any member of the consortium itself. If the consortium issuer were to use blind sigs, the consortium members wouldn't be able to ascertain who paid. The mechanism for settlement could be credit cards directly, mailed in checks, even FV. The preferences of the consortium members for issues of timeliness of settlement, reversibility, loss sharing, etc. would decide the actual choice of settlement mechanism. Eric