First advantage: Digital Currencies Are Cheaper!

Transaction costs using credit cards or PayPal (for example) range from 2.2% to 4.2%. International bank wires cost, on average, $43 to $73 using Western Union. Digital currencies allow transactions to take place from as low as 0.1% (GoldMoney), to 2% on the very high end (Standard Transactions). In other words, the cheapest digital currency on the Net allows online transactions for forty-five times less than credit cards. Even the most expensive digital currency costs less than a credit card transaction! Digital currencies lower transaction costs by three orders of magnitude! This means that transactions that were previously too expensive to make because of the time, money, and effort involved are now feasible using digital currencies, such as e-gold, gold-grams, Standard Dollars, Standard Gold, e-Bullion, and Hansa Dollars. For retail merchants who process a high volume of credit card transactions, the savings can be significant! The savings in transaction costs can then be passed along to their customers in the form of lower prices, which helps merchants accepting digital currencies to gain a competitive advantage.

Second advantage: Digital Currencies Are Faster!

The average credit card transaction can be reversed for three to six months after the sale takes place. This leaves merchants in a vulnerable position. Cheapskates reverse the charges on a regular basis against merchants who deliver the goods. This kind of theft drives up prices for everyone to cover the cost of lost goods and money due to fraudulent credit card use. Bank wires in-country take at least three days to clear. International bank wires can take up to two weeks to clear! Digital currencies solve these problems by allowing instantaneous and nonreversible transactions! For merchants, this means that all sales are final. They don’t have to worry about having their account frozen because some hacker used a stolen credit card at their store. This also means that when you need to send money to a friend or family member anywhere in the world, you can do it in a few seconds, and they can withdraw it as cash from an ATM machine the very next morning. That’s fast!

Third advantage: Digital Currencies Are International!

PayPal, for example, only works in the United States. In order for people outside the United States to sell their product or service on the Web, they have needed an international credit card merchant account. The problem is, outside the United States and Europe, merchant accounts can be difficult to obtain. This creates a barrier to entry that makes it harder for international entrepreneurs to offer their products and services to the world. Digital currencies solve this problem by allowing instantaneous transfers of money anywhere in the world! As the network of exchange agents grows, it is now possible to quickly and easily convert your digital currency to cash in any country in the world. A Standard Reserve “Instant World Account” allows account holders to convert their Standard Gold or Standard Dollars into cash at any ATM machine on the planet! E-bullion offers an anonymous numbered offshore debit card. This means that no matter where you are, if you can find an ATM machine, you can convert your Digital Currency into local currency!

Fourth advantage: Digital Currencies Are Safer!

Credit card fraud is becoming increasingly prevalent as hackers steal card numbers from computer networks, crooks root through your garbage and steal your identity, and other nefarious thieves devise ways to get your account number. Digital currencies offer a higher level of security than credit cards. Even the lowest level of security for digital money, an account number and password, is one order of magnitude safer than a credit card. All a thief needs to steal a credit card is the account number. With digital currencies, the merchant never sees your password, so it is impossible for a thief to steal it, unless you give it to him yourself (by letting him access your computer). For example, GoldMoney supports digital certificates for customer identification. These certificates cryptographically verify that you are you. This prevents thieves from accessing your account. E-bullion and E-gold are now offering similar security measures to their clients. It is also possible to combine digital certificates with an affordable biometric fingerprint reader to make sure that absolutely no one has access to your account but you. This is the highest level of security currently available on the Net, but there are other improvements still to come.

Fifth advantage: Digital Currencies Allow Person-to-Person Payments!

Digital currencies allow one thing that credit cards never will: person-to-person payments. As previously mentioned, PayPal is limited to the United States. So, what do you do when you want to buy a collector’s doll that you found in an online classified ad, but the owner lives in New Zealand and you live in the United States? Digital currencies allow you to spend your money to anyone else who has a digital currency account. It only takes a few moments for your friend to open his own account by using the Internet, and in most cases it doesn’t cost a penny! Person-to-person payments allow small-scale merchants to get started without the added expense of maintaining a credit card merchant account. This means lower costs of entry into the marketplace and lower costs of doing business!

Sixth advantage: Digital Currencies Allow You to Protect Your Privacy!

It is a known fact that traditional banks store massive databases that track all of your account activity in the name of “know your customer,” “fighting the war on drugs,” and, more recently, “the war on terrorism.” In reality, banks conveniently use those databases to sell information about their customers’ spending habits to other companies, and governments use that data to find excuses to confiscate your money and property. So, not only does your government have access to all of your spending habits, but so does any individual or organization who is willing to pay for it.

Most digital currencies are housed in “capital-friendly” jurisdictions with strict privacy protection laws. For someone to get your account information, they have to obtain a court order in the country where your digital currency is headquartered. This means that true crimes can be prosecuted, but your privacy will remain intact if you are just an average law-abiding customer. Think of it as guaranteeing yourself the right to “due process.” Furthermore, it is impossible to use digital currencies for money-laundering. You have to spend your national money (such as U.S. dollars) through an exchange agent in order to purchase digital currency in the first place. Because exchange agents all have accounts at banks with anti-money-laundering practices in place, this means that all money used to purchase digital currencies is theoretically “clean.” Clean money in, clean money out!

So, digital currencies are able to provide privacy to their customers, and still be able to guarantee that they are not being used for money laundering. Digital currencies are “orthogonal” to the traditional financial world. As long as all the money coming in and out goes through banks with anti-money-laundering practices in place, then money laundering is impossible. Furthermore, all of the digital currencies in business at this time are firmly committed to discouraging crime and money laundering, while at the same time protecting the privacy of their account holders. This means you can use digital currencies to do business with confidence that you are in good company! You can obtain a Standard Reserve Instant World Card or an e-bullion Debit Card and withdraw your digital currency from any ATM machine in the world as cash. But, because the cards are processed in an offshore jurisdiction, you can be assured that your privacy is protected. Because both of these companies are diligent in preventing money laundering, you can be assured that you are in good company