домашние задания, типовые расчёты / дз тех. статья с переводом терминов+аннотация и статья для перевода, 1ый семместр (ермолаева) / ДЗ 1 семместр Ермолаева / англ статья для перевода 1 сем B1 Ермолаева

INTERNET INSTANT ELECTRONIC MICROPAYMENT SYSTEM InfoCash

There is a great variety of charged resources and services that have one thing in common: they are provided in small batches and their cost is usually rather low (from half a dollar to a dozen or two). These include papers, video and audio records, other services such as various inquiries and yellow page listings, ticket reservation, lottery, ads, etc. Millions of people need such goods and services, and the usual way of payment for these is cash. We will further refer to this form of payment as micropayment.

In Internet micropayment, it's hardly possible to use traditional bank transfers: the process takes too long. Understandably, cash is ruled out here: the buyer and the seller may be located in different corners of the world. In case of a mass impersonal service, hardly anyone would risk to sell on tick with payment upon service receipt either. Of course, one can pay by credit card, but using credit cards to buy, say, an electronic newspaper article worth a quarter means to pay several times its cost for the transaction. For this very reason nobody buys electronic newspapers this way, just through subscriptions with payment in advance, in which case the cost may well exceed dozens or even hundreds of dollars to make payment by credit card sensible. And what about those who need information not on a regular basis, but from time to time and as soon as possible? This applies to many other inexpensive goods and services.

Among the many possible uses of micropayments on the Internet, let's focus on immediate payment for one-time services. It applies largely to accessing databases and files (both audio and video). Many providers would be happy to sell online their valuable information resources and be quickly paid for the services. Unfortunately, they do not know how to do this and choose the wrong way: they offer valuable (from the consumer's point of view) information free of charge in the attempt to make money on banner advertising. Such services include archives of newspapers and journals, database records, audio and video files, bus and rail schedules, graphic file catalogs, etc.

To remedy this situation we offer a payment system that allows all customers, who have ever deposited money into accounts of any Internet service provides and have a balance left on these accounts, use it for making micropayments for information and services of other providers.

Let's call this payment system InfoCash bearinng in mind its great effectiveness for providers of information and multimedia products.