In case you missed the news just like I did, be informed that e-gold Ltd, operators of the e-gold digital currency, now have an official blog at http://blog.e-gold.com and its blogger so far is their Chairman/Founder: Dr. Douglas Jackson.
The closing text of the very first blog entry, read:
Anyone remotely familiar with e-gold knows that it is currently, August 2007, under legal (and reputation) attack by the United States Secret Service. I intend though to stick to the affirmative message of e-gold in this blog – to undertake to do a better job telling the e-gold story and to become more visible as the human being primarily responsible for e-gold. The legal wrangle will be the subject matter for a separate legal blog.
If you ask me, I’d say this is long overdue.
Now to Amazon. Amazon has unveiled a new payment gateway it called AmazonPayments. Just think of Google Checkout, and you got the full picture. Your credit/debit card info – plus US bank account if you have one – is stored with Amazon, and you can make payment at third party websites, without revealing your financial information. That’s a good thing but I insist that they must go an extra mile, and be better than Google Checkout.
So far, I have not signed-up for Google Checkout since Paypal meets all my needs adequately but then I believe its about time we had a strong contender to Paypal. Neither Google Checkout nor AmazonPayments allows person-to-person money transfer, like Paypal does. They are both not online wallets but only help you to checkout somewhat faster. I’d say no to that.
The text below is part of a notice that appears at the bottom of the login page for AmazonPayments. It summarizes this AmazonPayments concept:
Amazon Payments, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com that provides a safe means to process transactions online. Amazon Payments does not share your financial information (such as credit card information) with any seller using Amazon Payments without your consent.
NB. I have an Amazon account that I use for their Associates (affliate) program. I have just tried logging-in to the AmazonPayments system, and got the following message:
We’re Sorry
We are experiencing technical difficulties with the Amazon Payments service.
We are working hard to resolve the issue.
Please try again shortly.
AmazonPayments is only for US citizens which is strike one for Amazon.
It is indeed obvious now that AmazonPayments is limited to US citizens only. Amongst their requirements is a valid US-issued driver’s licence.