Japan Ready to Launch Cellphone P2P Digital Cash

from Wireless Watch

WWJ Editors, 7 July 2005
bitWallet Ltd., the company that manages digital cash service Edy (Euro-Dollar-Yen), just announced [Press Release in Japanese] that they will launch their new service called "Edy to Edy" on Wednesday, July 20. According to their statement "the value of Edy can be sent only by the Edy number, the mail address or the telephone number, it is thought that the payment for net auction, personal gifts or adjustment and congratulation can be used more conveniently". A minimum transfer fee of 50yen will be charged for each transaction plus (Aha!) the govt's standard 5% consumption tax, the maximum amount per transfer is limited to 50,000yen. P2P transactions between individual handsets has, until now, not been possible in Japan

The related press release is here http://www.edy.jp/press/html/050706.html and a very rough translation of it into English is available in PDF (for the non-Japanese speakers) by sending e-mail to Y.

BitWallet is the company and Edy is the product solution.