Electronic Currency

By Vee Lean, Tan

Electronic Currency which also known as electronic money is a form of currency that does not exist physically and only exchanged electronically. The most common example of electronic money that occur in our surrounding is electronic fund transfer.

"The money screamed across the wires, its provenance fading in a maze of electronic transfers, which shifted it, hid it, broke it up into manageable wads which would be withdrawn and redeposited elsewhere, obliterating the trail."


by Linda Davies



The above statement is the opinion on the electronic currency by Linda Davies, in the book called “Nest of Vipers”.

As we all know, money was originally a physical substance like gold. The use of money can be traced back to several millenniums. It first exits in living form (e.g cow), then slowly evolve to shells, copper coin, money notes and at last has now changed into electronic form. The major limitation of the money we use today is its quantity is small in comparison with the intangible money that exists in our bank records. Therefore, it is not surprise to see the money notes we use today becomes obsolete.


The change in the nature of the money would absolutely bring significant consequences to our daily life. As the saying goes, “A coin has two sides”, so as the electronic currency. The use of this new currency will always bring us benefits and drawbacks at the same point of time. Therefore, I would like to discuss with my readers on the advantages and disadvantages of using electronic money.

Advantages
The first benefit is the wide use of electronic currency. As we all could notice, almost all the bank has now carrying on their business such as bill payment, fund transfer in internet. Also, the emerged of e-commerce has give another reason for electronic money to be implemented. These have made most money in today’s world is electronic, and tangible cash is becoming less frequent. Therefore, there is a bright future prospect on the electronic currency.


Also, by using electronic currency, it means that the people only need to perform their transaction in front of the computer. The elimination of over-the-counter transaction can save our time from a long queue. And thus it creates a lower-hassle environment.



Disadvantages
However, we should never overlook the drawbacks behind electronic currency. Flip through the newspaper in the past, we could notice that fraud over digital cash has been a pressing issue in recent years. Thus, when the use of electronic currency becomes the norm in our daily life, hacking into bank accounts and illegal retrieval of banking records will definitely cause unimaginative consequences to us.

Another disadvantage of electronic money is the limitation in technology. For those developing countries, there is always a pressing issue regarding the technology involved in digital cash. What if there is shortage of power supply when we conducting our electronic transaction? This is a new issue arise when people relying on electronic money to conduct their transaction.


In my opinion, the use of electronic currency in today should not be rush. We should always aware on the crime issues behind and whether or not our technology today is competent with such changes. Take a careful thought before we take any step forward. When things involving money, we should never over enthusiasm and the matter of risk and constraint must always take into account.


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Related links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_currency


http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/RDavies/arian/emoney.html


http://www.businesspme.com/uk/articles/trade/90/Electronic-money---advantages-and-disadvantages.html


1 comments:

cynthia said...

haha..i didn't know about e-currncy till i read this.
Weird that they come up with such term as e-currency!

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