Person-to-Person Payments

Hewlett Packard Co. thinks banks processing ATM, Web, branch, and other traffic in separate channels could benefit by switching all this volume through one common system. The company, which through its acquisition of Compaq Computer Corp. owns the Tandem unit whose computers drive so many payment data centers, is readying …

The dream of a digital currency, a form of money invented just for electronic transactions and just as anonymous as cash in the physical world, is at least as old as the original concept of the Mondex smart card 10 years ago. Next came Cybercash, Digicash, Beenz, Flooz, and others. …