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Last week, I made a posting on my blog about Bitcoin 2.0. It reminded me that years before Bitcoin was even invented, I created my own electronic currency. This is the story of the rise and fall of DigiCredit.com:

Back in the late 1990s, virtual currencies such as E-Gold and CyberCash were a hot trend, offering alternative payment systems for consumers to use on e-commerce sites. This appealed to people who did not have a credit card, and to people who at the time did not trust giving their credit card info out online. Years later Paypal ended up winning the online payments battle, but before that (in 2002) I jumped on the bandwagon and started my own competing site: DigiCredit.com. It was totally new type of payment service for websites that only sold digital goods (such as software downloads, eBooks, or memberships).

The way it worked was that people would make a purchase using the DigiCredit system and then pay for it later in real money. It was basically a promise to pay. No credit check, everyone was automatically approved to use it.   All they had to do was fill out their name, address, and email address and promise to pay the bill within 30 days, and their order was instantly processed. The DigiCredit system would then email them a bill, and if they didn’t pay after 15 days it would keep emailing them reminders until they paid. They could pay the bill by mail using a check or money order.

On my DigiCredit.com site