A proposal follows that is commercial in nature. I am posting it to this list per the instructions of one of the Wikimedia Foundation Board members. ***************** I would like to encourage the Wikimedia Foundation to: * Accept e-gold www.e-gold.com donations, * Post a prominent link to the e-gold site, using syntax that would enable the Foundation to capture referral incentives. e-gold is an alternative payment system that mobilizes the value of gold, as currency, for payments over the Internet. Online since 1996, the e-gold system serves over 1.5 million users in 165 countries. In 2003 alone, the e-gold system processed 15 million payments, conveying an aggregate value of $700 million. The e-gold website receives about one million visits per week. There is over $26 million worth of e-gold in continuous circulation, backed by 1.88 metric tonnes of physical gold in appropriate custodial arrangements. The system is highly robust technically and can scale readily. It costs nothing to create an e-gold account. There is no obligation and e-gold never sells/releases customer information (without a court order). There is no fee for the payer who makes an e-gold payment. The payment processing fee is deducted from the recipient. It is around 5% for tiny micropayments but quickly falls below 1% for larger value payments. The maximum fee is 5 centigrams of e-gold, equivalent to about 70 cents at current exchange rates. Every e-gold account can pay or receive payment and there is no merchant application process required to use the e-gold automation interfaces. The pertinent automation interface is the e-gold Shopping Cart Interface. It can be implemented in a simplified form in a few minutes. The full spec is at http://sci.e-gold.com The unique characteristics that would make e-gold advantageous for the Wikimedia Foundation include: * e-gold is truly global, enabling Wikimedia to receive donations from China or anywhere else as readily as from the US, * e-gold payments settle immediately and are irreversible. The bits that sometimes confuse people... * Since e-gold represents real gold, it is denominated in weight units. This is best understood by thinking of e-gold as if it were a foreign currency. Like any other currency, its exchange value relative to the US dollar will continuously fluctuate. This is a source of exchange rate risk, but can also be a good thing. * People often ask "How do I get e-gold". The rigorously precise answer is "just like you get any other money - you receive a payment from someone who already has some". Practically speaking though, what people generally mean by their question is "where can I exchange dollars to get e-gold?". Well, for purposes of the Foundation accepting e-gold payments, the answer is "Who cares? The Foundation would be receiving donations and it doesn't matter how the people clicking to the Foundation acquired their e-gold. If there was a cost involved, none of that cost is passed through or borne by the Foundation". But the answer you probably think you are looking for is "Go to www.omnipay.com (OmniPay is a company in Melbourne, FL that I'm CEO of) and use the exchange interface. OmniPay has the most competitive spreads for exchanging USD for e-gold and vice versa". Sorry for such a long post. But one more thing in closing. e-gold is an alternative that complements other payment systems. You would continue to accept whatever modes of payment you already do. But in adding e-gold, depending on the extent to which your website said nice things about it and/or emphasized the links, you could benefit pretty substantially by introducing your community of users to it. The e-gold Referral Incentive Program is detailed at http://www.e-gold.com/unsecure/incentive.htm eff.org and mozilla.org accept e-gold donations too. sincere regards, Dr. Douglas Jackson Chairman, e-gold Ltd. CEO, OmniPay djackson(a)e-gold.com _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l