is the fact that only such a small fraction of merchants on the Internet accept it. Magnatune, for example, understands the value of gold.
But most people don't get it. E-gold is cheaper for the merchant. E-gold is more reliable (no chargebacks). With e-gold the merchant doesn't need to know - and protect - a lot of sensitive credit card data.
But most merchants still stick to the default payment method, the credit card.
That makes it less attractive for costumers to use e-gold, which in turn makes it less attractive for merchants to accept it.
The obvious way to solve this problem is to set up gateways between credit card and e-gold. This is finally happening, with some third party providers setting up such out-exchanges. Some links (in no particular order) are Gold-ATM, money-around-the-world-com and pivecard. I have no experience with any of these services and therefore can't offer any opinion about them.
However, I think this is an important step. It assures that e-gold becomes compatible with the default. It will be interesting to see if these new projects are successful.
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at June 30, 2004 05:16 PM | TrackBack