Anonymous payment scheme

[Robert Hettinga]

At 1:21 PM 1/2/95, Hal wrote:
>I'm not sure what you do in this situation if they ask to see some ID
>when you try to use the card.  This would be rather embarrassing, it
>seems to me.  Sorry, I guess I left my drivers license in my other
>pants... Or, never mind, try this card.  That other one was from before I
>changed my name...

Why not, "It's a pseudonym."?

Looks like an evangelistic opportunity to me. Pseudonyms can't be illegal,
or Mark Twain and Bob Dylan would have written from prison. ;-).

I also don't believe that you are legally required to produce ID for a
credit card purchase.  That was the point about those pictures on the front
of Citibank cards. Citicorp did that to get around the legal restrictions
on demanding ID to cope with the much larger issue of fraud. Most (smaller)
vendors hardly check the signature on the back, much less validating it
against a state ID, however.

Hmmm. What if you produced a pseudonym card *with* your picture on the
front?  I smell a market opportunity. Or not...

>And personally, I am more concerned about the
>bank and gov't tracking my spending patterns than whether the guy I buy
>gas from knowing my name.  The bank has a lot more information about me
>which is much more threatening to my privacy.  A nom de guerre VISA or
>debit card does not seem to help this problem.

Indeed.

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

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