In the tradition of newbies everywhere, I'd like to toss out an idea to see if it generates any comments. I've read through the recent archives and didn't see anything like this.
It seems that the main impediment to widespread use of DGC's is two fold. People don't see it as being useful and it's too difficult to move normal currency into the DGC. The first can be addressed by getting more online merchants signed up and offering their products at a discount when they are purchased with a DGC. This is an education/marketing problem and GS&R has worked toward that by providing their shopping cart interface for free. More can be done though. Educating people about DGC's is not adequate if there is no way for average people to enter the market and use them. One way to lower this barrier is to accept credit card payments to fund DGC accounts for a fee around 5%. This isn't practical because of the chargeback issue and CC transaction fees. But what if people could go to Wal-Mart, Target or other merchants and fund their DGC accounts? One way to make this work is for offline retailers to sell cards that are tied to DGC accounts for a fixed dollar amount. At the time of purchase, the card is swiped and the account is funded with an amount of gold equal to the face value of the card. This account could then be used for online transactions. The customer could return to the merchant and add more funds to their account at a later time. Offline merchants who have online operations would be incented to do this because they wouldn't have to deal with chargebacks or transaction fees when the accept DGC. Also, they would be getting a cut of any online transactions of customers who purchased their DGC at their stores. Customers would like it because they would get a break on products they purchased online and online merchants would like it because it would weed out scammers and fraud. If someone wants to implement this idea and make millions, go for it. If I'm a loon, well ok. I think this would be a great way for GS&R to establish e-gold as a valuable brand, though it would take some marketing to pull it off and I don't know if their interested in going that direction or not. An established exchange agent might undertake this to turn a profit. Anyway, have at it. --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses.
