Electronic Cash Report - Advantages and Disadvantages of ECash

This report discusses the advantages and disadvantages of electronic cash (ECash), a digital money product that provides a way to pay for products and services without using physical currency. It also covers the use of ECash in the current world and its offline and online applications.

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Electronic cash report
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Running header: electronic cash report
Electronic cash is simply known as ECash is a digital money product that provides a way
to pay for products and services without using physical currency, i.e., coin or paper money. It is
money in soft form and can be fed into credit cards, and smartcards hence reduce the risk of
carrying cash in physical form. Ecash can be used to carry out any transaction anywhere in the
world (Nakamoto, 2017).
The use of electronic cash in the current world.
Electronic cash has been globally accepted and is the most common way to carry out
transactions. This is because it has reduced the bulk of going to the bank and other financial
institutions to access banking services such as making payments, withdrawals, deposits etc. as
one can perform these operations at the comfort of his or her house. This has led to banks and
financial institutions incorporating the electronic cash method where they store your money your
account by using the computers (Perrier, Yu and Anderson 2016). You can access your money at
any needed time as you only need a phone or a computer to access the funds and these accounts
are updated each time one carries out a transaction.
Electronic cash method can be used both online and offline. In online cases, you will
need the internet, personal computer and has to be connected across a network. This equipment
provides aid in which you can carry out online trading activities at any place or location in the
world. The internet offers a connection where online traders can link with their customers in
various places in the world. It also regulates the flow of digital money to ensure all the complete
phases of any transaction are met which are the purchase of product or service, payment and
delivery of product or service (Aigbe and Akpojaro, 2014).
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In offline cases, the use of Ecash involves the use of credit cards, smart cards, and debit
cards. The technique used is that money is loaded into these cards and is used to pay for products
and services and various shopping points. These smart cards are linked to personal accounts in
the bank and are also updated each time a transaction takes place.
Advantages of electronic cash
Electronic cash has led to advancement in business as it accommodates the various
technological changes that have taken place in the world of business (Marghescu, Svasta, and
Simion, 2015). Ecash has led to people carrying out business activities even though they are in
different locations including different countries. It has led to improved security as carrying out
transitions electronically is safer as compared to physical transactions involving money in cash
form. One can trace the cash if lost as there exist records of all transactions carried out.
Disadvantages of electronic cash.
As the saying goes that anything that has an advantage also has a disadvantage.
Ecash comes along with some drawbacks as any other system. One of them is poor security as
the system can be easily hacked, and fraud activities carried out such as crediting or debiting
money into wrong accounts. Another disadvantage is that for one to use Ecash, you need the
internet, computers and other physical devices. Some may not afford these devices hence are
locked out.
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References
Nakamoto, S. (2017). Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, Oct. 2008. URL http://www. bitcoin.
org/bitcoin. pdf.(cited on pp. 15 and 87).
Perrier, T., Yu, S., & Anderson, R. (2016, November). UW-Pesa: A Mobile Money User Experience
Experimentation Platform. In Proceedings of the 7th Annual Symposium on Computing for
Development (p. 41). ACM.
Aigbe, P., & Akpojaro, J. (2014). Analysis of security issues in electronic payment systems. International
journal of computer applications, 108(10).
Marghescu, A., Svasta, P., & Simion, E. (2015, October). High speed and secure variable probability
Pseudo/True Random Number Generator using FPGA. In Design and Technology in Electronic
Packaging (SIITME), 2015 IEEE 21st International Symposium for (pp. 323-328). IEEE.
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