Electric-money systems must be able to handle high volume at a marginal cost per transaction. Millicent, a division of Digital Equipment, may achieve this goal. Millicent uses a variation on the digital-check model with decentralized validation at the vendor's server. Millicent relies on third-party organizations that take care of account management, billing, and other administrative duties. Millicent transactions use scrip, digital money that is valid only for Millicent.
Consumers receive a secret code when they obtain a scrip.
This proves ownership of the currency when it's being spent. The vendor that issues the scrip value uses a master-customer secret to verify the consumer's secret. Digital sees the system as a way for companies to charge for information that Internet users obtain from Web sites. Security, authentication, anonymity, and divisibility all have developers working to produce the collective answers that may open the floodgates to electronic commerce in the near future. The fact is that the electric-money genie is already out of the bottle.