Electronic-Funds-Transfer-Systems

Book reviews for "Electronic-Funds-Transfer-Systems" sorted by average review score:

Computer Money: A Systematic Overview of Electronic Payment Systems

Published in Hardcover by Morgan Kaufmann (October, 1996)

Authors: Andreas Furche and Graham Wrightson

Amazon base price: $29.95
Buy one from zShops for: $48.99

Average review score:

Short(100 pages), a good start, but not the overall answer

You will get an introduction and background information to generally understand and evalute eCash-Systems on your own. I am missing more information about actual implementations and a view into the future. It is a good start-up, but if you want to dive deeper into this topic you need more information.

Electronic Payment Systems for E-Commerce

Published in Hardcover by Artech House (15 August, 2001)

Authors: Donal O'Mahony, Michael Peirce, Hitesh Tewari, and O'Mahony Donal

Amazon base price: $88.00
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Average review score:

An excellent book, but...

If you want a great overview of electronic payments, the various schemes in operation and how they work, this is the book for you. I downloaded the eBook version of this book to do some research on electronic payments and it proved invaluable. I have read only the following sections in detail: overview, security techniques and micropayments, but I would say the book is worth the price just for the lucidity, structured presentation and breadth of coverage of these chapters. The chapters on credit cards and other forms of ePayments look just as well written based on my cursory look at them. The language is precise and non-obfuscatory, readable by managers and technical folks alike, while providing a depth of detail adequate to design your own systems based on these principles, unlike your typical technical book! However, the eBook version has certain extremely annoying featires which compel me to give this book only 3 stars as opposed to the 5 stars it deserves: you can't print even a single page, you can download it only to 3 computers (which is a pain if you have a PC and a laptop at home, and a work PC, and if you then want to refer to it when on a business trip or vacation from another PC), and you can't copy and paste even a word from this document. Draconian copyright measures, if you consider that you can do all these things with a paper version of the book. This is exactly the kind of arrogance on the part of eBook publishers that's going to kill the industry, because I will never buy an eBook again unless I have no choice. If you aren't in a tearing hurry, I'd say get the paper version.

Virtual Money: Understanding the Power and Risks of Money's High-Speed Journey into Electronic Space

Published in Hardcover by Oxford University Press (September, 1997)

Author: Elinor Harris Solomon

Amazon base price: $35.00
Used price: $1.67
Buy one from zShops for: $2.91

For most of us, the term virtual money means financial transactions into the Internet. But virtual money has been around for decades, since the first electronic-funds transfer. Even the mundane automatic teller machine runs on virtual money. Yet, as Solomon points out, until virtual money hit the Internet, most of us considered the topic deathly dull. Now that it's grabbed the headlines, she takes the opportunity to show us how it's been truly fascinating all along.

The book begins with a brief but firm grounding in how money developed, from the days of barter, through gold and currency, to plastic and electrons. She goes on to paint today's monetary world as a system both intricate in its complexity and Zen-like in its sensitivity, where corrections must be made with a light touch and where attempts to control it result in loss of control. She also looks at the intriguing cases that crop up as each new innovation gives the unscrupulous new ways to cheat the system and she examines how clever safeguards are eventually put into place.

Then, Solomon goes on to explore the still-developing future of virtual money. Here, we see not only the conveniences and benefits that will result but also the mechanics behind them, as intricate and mesmerizing as watchworks. Yet Solomon never overloads us with so much detail that tedium sets in. Instead, she shows us the pieces coming together like some organic, self-organizing puzzle and lets us both enjoy and anticipate its emerging form.

Average review score:

Vague babble

This was a real disappointment. The book is almost unreadable. Terms are defined and then not used properly or are jumbled together--you never can tell what she's talking about. Too many vague generalities. Sentences often make no sense. This book desperately needs an editor. I don't think the author has anything interesting to say about "virtual money," but it's hard to tell. A confusing jumble of babble. Click on to the next book.

Disappointing

This book had a lot of promise.. I was very interested in learning more about the world of Electronic Commerce and how local and global economies are being impacted. This book made a few interesting points, but for the most part was tedious to read, and never got into enough detail on any one subject to be interesting.

I'm still looking for another e-commerce roadmap...

OK, it's a bit academic, but I found it helpful.

Speaking as a layman who had practically no knowledge of e-commerce I found the book to be a good introduction to the world of electronic money and of what the future of money will probably be (Personally, I don't like what I see). Along with the history of money, and the development of the Internet, the book contains a lot of detail on the nuts and bolts of the whole complex network; and I don't know how interesting that is to the average person. I read this book not for pleasure, but as research for a paper I am now composing on a related issue. Regarding the topic of virtual money, the author seems to discuss the problems and risks surrounding it rather than give concrete solutions. But neither the publisher nor the author described the work as an "answer book". From what I can see, the write up on the book's dust jacket is an accurate summary of what the book contains.

Smart Cards : A Guide to Building and Managing Smart Card Applications

Published in Paperback by John Wiley & Sons (24 December, 1997)

Authors: J. Thomas Monk and Henry N. Dreifus

Amazon base price: $39.99
Used price: $22.06
Buy one from zShops for: $22.95

Average review score:

Proven irrelevant

Well, now it's 2002, and the the revolution has definitely not been televised. We've heard now from authors like these guys for about, oh, 10 years or so that smart cards are the next revolution. That it's just a matter of time before mag stripe cards are swept aside in this tidal wave of new technology.

Friends, it just ain't gonna happen here in the States. Despite massive attempts by GemPlus and other 'leaders' described in this book, the entire thing has been just one more marketing-driven attempt to force unneeded technology on the masses. The dog didn't hunt, and these 'visionaries' are now unwinding all their efforts here, sending thousands of programmers out on to the streets.

This thinly veiled advertisement, with very poor design and little original content, has suffered the ultimate indignity: history has rendered it all but irrelevant.

Waste of time and money

I bought this book hoping it would give some ideas on how smart card technology may offer new business opportunities for my software development company, but found nothing of the sort. I have not found an answer to a single question I had, for that matter. The laguage is horrible, information is presented poorly, lots of totally useless details and almost nothing on the subject I was mostly interested in: how (and why) a company would embrace this tachnology to make money.

Informercial, don't buy it.

Very disappointing. I am 75% through this book and struggling to finish it. Whilst the book has some good information (smart card lingo, players in the industry, trends...etc) most are useless because the materials are so badly organised. Filling up the book with charts, diagrams and detailed reference tables of smart card standards does NOT make it a useful book, all are illrelevant without much deeper explanation. Remember when you were in high school, you copied a few paragraphs from one book and a few from an other to "write" an essay --- it reads just like that, very amateurish. A lot of the so called "case study" blah about how good/bad the technology is, but no details. It's an informercial.... "Buy my stuff, and I'm going to make you lots of money. This man with only a high school education bought my tape barely over 3 weeks and he is now making $5000 a week,....blah, blah, blah".... where is the bloody proof ?! It's a damn Monday night informercial. Oh, I actually work for a smart card company so I may be bias. Amazon should introduce half a point, this book is a bit below 1.