Consumers are extremely conservative about money. Credit cards, ATM cards, and debit cards all took time to gain acceptance. Digital Money and Other Electronic Payment Systems Digital money systems being developed and deployed today challenge society's long-held understanding of what money is. The textbook characteristics of money are that it is a generally acceptable medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a lasting store of value. Money must be guarded against overissue and inflation that erode its value.
Digital money is monetary value represented by digital information and spent electronically.
The new and important feature of digital money is that it does not necessarily bear any official sanction and yet may have many of the classical attributes of money. Seemingly subtle differences between conventional bank money and the new digital money may have far-reaching consequences. Money loaded on stored-value cards. Money is downloaded into the card's memory and is spent by passing the card through a special reader. Smart cards have been widely used in Europe and Asia since the late 1980s, but have only recently been introduced to the United States in pilot projects.