Accounts can be interleaved with the object or service itself. The bill for a video comes incorporated into the video. Invoices reside alongside of bar codes and can be paid with the zap of a laser. Anything that can hold an electronic charge can hold a fiscal charge. Foreign currencies become a matter of changing a symbol.
Money is as malleable as digitized information.
This makes it all the easier to monetize exchanges and interactions that were never part of an economy before. It opens the floodgates of commerce onto the Net. Until now, sophisticated manipulations of money have been the private domain of professional financial institutions-a financial priesthood. But just as a million Macs broke the monopoly of the high priests guarding access to mainframe computers, so e-money will break the monopoly of financial Brahmins. Or maybe you would charge interest by the minute if you sent a payment in early.