There's an outfit called NetBank, which is selling e-cash-like *certificate numbers*, through a dial-up BBS on a 900 line, in any denomination you want, which you can e-mail to vendors to buy stuff with. In fact all the interactions with the bank (deposits, breaking "bills" into smaller denominations, etc.) are done with switch codes in e-mail. It's extremely ungainly, and it looks userous too, to the extent that they charge 20% (each way?) to cash you in and out. I hoovered out all the stuff in their infobot (netbank-info@agents.com), and I really haven't plowed through it all yet. If you folks are interested I'll summarize it for the group and/or redirect my dumpster-divings on the subject to you individually in e-mail. Just let me know. 'Course you're welcome to play with their infobot yourselves, I suppose ;-). It looks like someone did some serious work on this, folks. That's just a philosophy major from Missouri talking, of course. I wonder who they are? I heard some discussion about them here, but I can't seem to find the thread in my e$ article stash.... Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923