Real-Time Economy Community - New ideas

Innovative RFID-applications

Mikael Fagerholm — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 13:19:45 GMT

An example of a person wanting to use a public toilet but not having any coins available. The process of going to ATM which has a line, changing the bill to coins and then finally changing the coin to a polet which gives access to toilet takes a significant amount of time.

Our suggestion is that this toilet access could be transferred to a similar RFID-platform as the travel card. So every day services could be carried in your pocket in a pre-paid form with an ease of use.

This of course would require the installation of readers in lots of places and defining which services should be transformed. These are just a few limitations which come to mind.

Sonera promotes e-invoicing

Esko Penttinen — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 08:51:24 GMT

Sonera encourages its consumer customers to move to electronic invoicing by placing a 1 euro fee on paper invoices. We need more companies like Sonera to make this kind of a statement!

http://www.kauppalehti.fi/5/i/talous/uutiset/etusivu/uutinen.jsp?oid=10151

Clash of interests

Krzysztof Dorota — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:43:05 GMT

Despite of the real-time world, Mr. Same Guy as a buyer will keep all his payments on hold until the respective due date, paying A.L (ate).A.P. That's the standard way of doing payments. This clash of interests between the payees and payers might potentially create some tension in the RTE. However, it can be solved by rewarding payers committing payments before the due day. The earlier and cheaper way (for the payee) you pay the less you pay. It simply couldn't be simpler. Because of the considerable handling cost (50 Bn Euro / yearly in Europe), cash payments shall be penalized instead of being favored. But that's another story.