It's hard to imagine a way around the fact that if you're going to be buying stuff via computer, then somebody will be keeping records of it all via computer. The company's founder, David Chaum, wanted to go beyond proprietary electronic banking technology and create a system that allowed people to pay for things without having their buying habits catalogued. Chaum's ecash system is based on the mathematically complicated but incredibly useful techniques of cryptography, or code making. Today, all serious work in cryptography is done using computers, because of the complexity of the codes involved. Chaum got his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley, and later went on to found the International Association for Cryptologic Research.
Cash transactions are effectively anonymous from the standpoint of record keeping.
End of story. If you pay by credit card, the amount, place, and time of the purchase are all recorded. Chaum believes that privacy concerns and the overhead of credit card charges leaves room for a new system that allows very small payments. Two banks, one in the United States and one in Finland, already offer accounts from which ecash can be withdrawn. In addition to anonymity and low overhead, ecash allows payments between individuals, another aspect of cash which has been lost in credit-card based payment systems.