Documents for Jade Mountain Exchange's First Stock Listing

Economy - Payment Methods - 1

Document from the Dept. of the Economy: 

InterCons Central Bank, Inc. = ICB

InterCons Payment Processing Services, Inc. = IPPS

PantalCo Payment Processing Services, Inc. = PPPS

InterCons Dollar (ICB credit units) = IC$, ICD

====Method Consideration Summaries====

1. ICB issued banknotes--denominations IC$1, IC$5, and IC$10:

Status: declined--counterfeit risk too high

Note: may be possible with future technological capabilities; DRD contacted

Note 2: other denominations also declined 

2. IPPS issued silver, gold credit cards:

Status: declined--card theft risk too high (intrinsic value)

3. IPPS issued copper, non-metal, etc. (relatively low value material) credit cards:

Status: approved

Note: no local or regional use restrictions; continental restrictions apply 

Note 2: transactions limited to IC$100 or less

4. Non-InterCons bank issued banknotes:

Status: approved

Note: banknotes NOT liabilities of ICB, InterCons, or any of its subsidiaries unless stated otherwise by said subsidiary 

5. Certified checks (certified by bank or other depository institution):

Status: approved

6. Cashier's checks (or similar checks of different name):

Status: approved

====End of Summaries====

While establishing standard payment methods supported by InterCons, we faced and continue to face several challenges, including:

1. Counterfeiting danger:

Because ICB and InterCons are private corporations, counterfeit banknotes would have much more of a devastating effect on us than they would on a state or its central bank. Counterfeit ICB banknotes would effectively be liabilities of ICB, created without a loan or other debit on ICB's balance sheets (remember, the way the general public perceives credits and debits is backwards). ICB strives to maintain the value of the ICD at a stable level, and InterCons must provide goods and services in exchange for ICD to prevent monetary collapse. More on how the InterCons monetary system works will be provided in other documents.

2. Technological challenges: 

We do not have electronic processing or advanced anti-counterfeit technologies available to us at this time. DRD is working on these, however.

3. Processing times:

Any payment processing, and along with it stolen card reporting and merchant notification, will take much longer due to our current reliance on manual transaction recording and the long distances records have to be transported (at least that's faster with SkyWings flying them).