[fc-discuss] Financial Cryptography Update: On Digital Cash-like Payment Systems

cyphrpunk cyphrpunk at gmail.com
Thu Oct 27 23:55:29 EDT 2005


On 10/25/05, Travis H. <solinym at gmail.com> wrote:
> More on topic, I recently heard about a scam involving differential
> reversibility between two remote payment systems.  The fraudster sends
> you an email asking you to make a Western Union payment to a third
> party, and deposits the requested amount plus a bonus for you using
> paypal.  The victim makes the irreversible payment using Western
> Union, and later finds out the credit card used to make the paypal
> payment was stolen when paypal reverses the transaction, leaving the
> victim short.

This is why you can't buy ecash with your credit card. Too easy to
reverse the transaction, and by then the ecash has been blinded away.
If paypal can be reversed just as easily that won't work either.

This illustrates a general problem with these irreversible payment
schemes, it is very hard to simply acquire the currency. Any time you
go from a reversible payment system (as all the popular ones are) to
an irreversible one you have an impedence mismatch and the transfer
reflects rather than going through (so to speak).

CP

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