ABSTRACT
Money in the form of paper notes or metallic coins has no link with the nominal identity of the holder (buyer or seller) and of their banking coordinates. This attribute can be reproduced in some face-to-face systems (see Chapter 9). Anonymity in a remote transaction depends on two factors: the ability to communicate in an anonymous manner and the capability to make an anonymous payment. Clearly, an anonymous communication is a sine qua non condition for anonymous payments; once the source of a communication is identified, the most sophisticated scrambling strategies will not be
able to mask the identity of the intervening party or the station of origin (Simon, 1996). Indeed, identification of the line on the basis of the calling number is the authentication method used in Minitel.
