Industry WIKI

Conversational commerce is e-commerce done via various means of conversation (live support on e-commerce Web sites, online chat using messaging apps, chatbots on messaging apps or websites, voice assistants) and using technology such as: speech recognition, speaker recognition (voice biometrics), natural language processing and artificial intelligence. Conversational commerce often relie

A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educational, or musical form. Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itsel

Core banking is a banking service provided by a group of networked bank branches where customers may access their bank account and perform basic transactions from any of the member branch offices.

CoreCard Corporation is an American financial technology company based in Norcross, Georgia. Before 2021, it was named Intelligent Systems Corporation and once sold portable computers, video terminals, expansion cards, and other peripherals through a variety of manufacturing subsidiaries.

Corporate social media is the use of social media platforms, social media communications and social media marketing techniques by and within corporations, ranging from small businesses and tiny entrepreneurial startups to mid-size businesses and huge multinational firms. Within the definition of social media, there are different ways corporations utilize it. Although there is no systemat

Cost per action (CPA), also sometimes misconstrued in marketing environments as cost per acquisition, is an online advertising measurement and pricing model referring to a specified action, for example, a sale, click, or form submit (e.g., contact request, newsletter sign up, registration, etc.).

A courier is a person or organization that delivers a message, package or letter from one place or person to another place or person. Typically, a courier provides their courier service on a commercial contract basis; however, some couriers are government or state agency employees (for example: a diplomatic courier).

Court auction is an auction which takes place at a public location designated by the court.

Covad Communications Company, also known as Covad Communications Group, was an American provider of broadband voice and data communications. By Q3 2006, the company had 530,000 subscribers, and ranked as the 16th largest Internet service provider in the United States. Covad was acquired by U.S. Venture Partners, who in 2010 announced a three-way merger of MegaPath, Covad, and Speakeasy,

Credit Karma is an American multinational personal finance company founded in 2007. It has been a brand of Intuit since December 2020. It is best known as a free credit and financial management platform, but its features also include monitoring of unclaimed property databases and a tool to identify and dispute credit report errors. The company operates in the United States, Canada and t

Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance, to fund projects "without standard financial intermediaries". In 2015, over US$34 billion was raised worldwide by crowdfunding. One of the companies that obtained money through crowdfundin

The general notion of cryptocurrencies in Europe denotes the processes of legislative regulation, distribution, circulation, and storage of cryptocurrencies in Europe. In April 2023, the EU Parliament passed the Markets in Crypto Act (MiCA) unified legal framework for crypto-assets within the European Union.

With the arrival of several figures led by Brock Pierce following the passing of hurricane Maria in 2017, cryptocurrency became an issue of media and economic interest in the Caribbean archipelago of Puerto Rico. These traders relocated to the island motivated by the tax incentives provided by Act 20-2012 and Act 22-2012 (both now part of as Act 60–2019) and the tropical setting. They cl

Cryptocurrency is a type of digital asset that uses distributed ledger, or blockchain, technology to enable a secure transaction.

Cryptocurrency has been used extensively in criminal activities, such as investment and romance scams (often called "pig-butchering"), ransomware payments, thefts and exchange hacks, money laundering and sanctions evasion, darknet-market transactions, and off-chain coercion to obtain private keys. Law enforcement notes that investment fraud and laundering are frequent criminal uses of cr

A cryptocurrency exchange, or a digital currency exchange (DCE), is a business that allows customers to trade cryptocurrencies or digital currencies for other assets, such as conventional fiat money or other digital currencies. Exchanges may accept credit card payments, wire transfers or other forms of payment in exchange for digital currencies or cryptocurrencies. A cryptocurrency excha

Cryptocurrency in Australia refers to the use and regulation of digital currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and various other altcoins within the country of Australia. Australia has been recognized as a relatively progressive country regarding cryptocurrency adoption and regulation.

Cryptocurrency in Iran has emerged as a pivotal response to economic pressures and global isolation. In 2026, Iran had a total US$7.8 billion cryptocurrency market, and a number of exchanges such as Nobitex. Iran's interest in cryptocurrencies began in 2017 when international sanctions obstructed Iran's access to the global financial markets. In 2019, the government legalized cryptocurr

Cryptocurrency in Nigeria describes the extent of cryptocurrency use, social acceptance and regulation in Nigeria. Nigerians are one of the major global users of cryptocurrencies.

A cryptocurrency tumbler or cryptocurrency mixing service is a service that mixes potentially identifiable or "tainted" cryptocurrency funds with others, so as to obscure the trail back to the fund's original source. This is usually done by pooling together source funds from multiple inputs for a large and random period of time, and then spitting them back out to destination addresses. A

A cryptocurrency wallet is a device, physical medium, program or an online service which stores the public and/or private keys for cryptocurrency transactions. In addition to this basic function of storing the keys, a cryptocurrency wallet more often offers the functionality of encrypting and/or signing information. Signing can for example result in executing a smart contract, a cryptocu

Cryptojacking is the act of exploiting a computer to mine cryptocurrencies, often through websites, against the user's will or while the user is unaware. One notable piece of software used for cryptojacking was Coinhive, which was used in over two-thirds of cryptojacks before its March 2019 shutdown. The cryptocurrencies mined the most often are privacy coins—coins with hidden transactio

CryptoKitties is a blockchain game developed by Canadian studio Dapper Labs. The game allows players to buy, sell, and create non-fungible tokens (NFTs) using Ethereum. These NFTs represent virtual cats. The game's popularity in December 2017 congested the Ethereum network, causing it to reach an all-time high in the number of transactions and slowing it down significantly.

CryptoNote is an application layer protocol designed for use with cryptocurrencies that aims to solve specific problems identified in Bitcoin.

CryptoPunks is a non-fungible token (NFT) collection on the Ethereum blockchain. The project was launched in June 2017 by the Larva Labs studio, a two-person team consisting of Canadian software developers Matt Hall and John Watkinson. The experimental project was inspired by the London punk scenes, the cyberpunk movement, and electronic music artists Daft Punk. The crypto art blockchain

Finco Services, Inc., branded as Current, is an American financial services and software development company based in New York City. It provides mobile banking services through its partner banks, Choice Financial Group, and Cross River Bank.

Cvent Holding Corp. is a Tysons Corner, Virginia–based company that provides software-as-a-service (SaaS) for meetings, events, and hospitality management.

DAI (or DAI, formerly Sai or SAI) is a stablecoin token on the Ethereum blockchain which uses smart contracts designed to control supply to keep its value as close to one United States dollar as possible. DAI is maintained and regulated by MakerDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization composed of the owners of its governance token, MKR, who may propose and vote on changes to certain

In finance, a dark pool (also black pool) is a private forum (alternative trading system or ATS) for trading securities, derivatives, and other financial instruments. Liquidity on these markets is called dark pool liquidity. The bulk of dark pool trades represent large trades by financial institutions that are offered away from public exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange and the NA

Dash is an open source cryptocurrency. It is an altcoin that was forked from the Bitcoin protocol. It is also a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) run by a subset of its users. It was previously known as Xcoin and Darkcoin.

Data Explorers is a privately owned financial data and software company headquartered in London, UK, with offices in New York, US, Edinburgh and Hong Kong. The company provides financial benchmarking information to the Securities lending Industry and short-side intelligence to the Investment Management community. The company has a global dataset covering $12 trillion of securities in the

Dayforce, Inc., formerly Ceridian, is an American human resources software and services company.

Debanking (sometimes spelled de-banking, and also known within the banking industry as de-risking) is the closure of people's or organizations' bank accounts by banks that perceive the account holders to pose a financial, legal, regulatory, or reputational risk to the bank.

Decentraland is a 3D virtual world platform. Users may buy virtual plots of land in the platform as NFTs via the MANA cryptocurrency, which uses the Ethereum blockchain. Designers can create and sell clothes and accessories for the avatars to be used in the virtual world.

A decentralised application (DApp, dApp, Dapp, or dapp) is an application that can operate autonomously, typically through the use of smart contracts, that run on a blockchain or other distributed ledger system. DApps provide a function or utility to their users with less human intervention. Control over some DApps is distributed over holders of tokens that represent ownership over a DAp

A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is a software system for organization of other computer programs handled through a decentralized ledger technology like a blockchain. These systems are used most commonly to handle voting and finances, among other processes. The precise legal status of this type of organization system is unclear.

Decentralized finance (often stylized as DeFi) provides financial instruments and services through smart contracts on a programmable, permissionless blockchain. This approach reduces the need for intermediaries such as brokerages, exchanges, or banks. DeFi platforms enable users to lend or borrow funds, speculate on asset price movements using derivatives, trade cryptocurrencies, insure

In business analysis, the Decision Model and Notation (DMN) is a standard published by the Object Management Group. It is a standard approach for describing and modeling repeatable decisions within organizations to ensure that decision models are interchangeable across organizations.

In business, a demand chain is the understanding and management of customer demand, in contrast to a supply chain. P. M. Madhani (2019) suggests that the demand chain "comprises all the demand processes necessary to understand, create, and stimulate customer demand". Cranfield School of Management academic Martin Christopher has suggested that "ideally the supply chain should become a de

A demand-side platform (DSP) is a concept that combines various software for advertisers (or advertising agencies) to automate the process of buying and selling ad impressions in real time.

Diebold Nixdorf, Incorporated is an American multinational financial and retail technology company based in North Canton, Ohio. It specializes in the sale, manufacture, installation, and service of self-service transaction systems (such as ATMs and currency processing systems), point-of-sale terminals, physical security products, and software and related services for global financial, re

Diem (formerly known as Libra) was a permissioned blockchain-based stablecoin payment system proposed by the American social media company Facebook. The plan also included a private currency implemented as a cryptocurrency. The launch was originally planned to be in 2020, but only rudimentary experimental code was released.

Digital banking is part of the broader context for the move to online banking, where banking services are delivered over the internet. The shift from traditional to digital banking has been gradual, remains ongoing, and is constituted by differing degrees of banking service digitization. Digital banking involves high levels of process automation and web-based services and may include AP

Digital currency (digital money, electronic money or electronic currency) is any currency, money, or money-like asset that is primarily managed, stored or exchanged on digital computer systems, especially over the internet. Types of digital currencies include cryptocurrency, virtual currency and central bank digital currency. Digital currency may be recorded on a distributed database on

Digital Currency Group Inc. (DCG) is an American investment company focusing on the digital currency market and decentralized technologies. It is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut. The subsidiaries include Grayscale Investments, Yuma, Foundry, Luno, and Fortitude Mining. It also formerly owned the now-inactive Genesis Global Holdco and CoinDesk.

Digital Research, Inc. (DR or DRI) was a privately held American software company created by Gary Kildall to market and develop his CP/M operating system and related 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit systems like MP/M, Concurrent DOS, FlexOS, Multiuser DOS, DOS Plus, DR DOS and GEM. It was the first large software company in the microcomputer world. Digital Research was originally based in Pacifi

Digital River, Inc. was a privately held company headquartered in Minnetonka, Minnesota that provided global e-commerce, payments and marketing services. In 2013, Digital River reported having processed more than US$30 billion in online transactions. The company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in May 2025.

A digital wallet, also known as an e-wallet or mobile wallet, is an electronic device, online service, or software program that allows one party to make electronic transactions with another party by exchanging digital currency units for goods and services. This can include purchasing items either online or at the point of sale in a brick-and-mortar store, either using a smartphone or oth

A distributed ledger (also called a shared ledger or distributed ledger technology or DLT) is a system whereby replicated, shared, and synchronized digital data is geographically spread (distributed) across many sites, countries, or institutions. In contrast to a centralized database, a distributed ledger does not require a central administrator, and consequently does not have a single (

Distributed ledger technology law ("DLT law") (also called blockchain law, Lex Cryptographia or algorithmic legal order) is a loosely defined emerging field of law resulting from the recent use of distributed ledger technology in business and government. Those smart contracts which were created through interaction of lawyers and developers and are intended to also be enforceable legal co

Dogecoin ( DOHJ-koyn or DOHZH-koyn, Abbreviation: DOGE; sign: Ð) is a cryptocurrency created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system as a joke, making fun of the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies at the time. It is considered both the first "meme coin", and more specifically the first "dog coin". Despite its satirical nature, some

Double-spending is the unauthorized spending of the same money (either digital or conventional) more than once. As with counterfeit money, double-spending leads to supply inflation by creating a new amount of copied currency that did not previously exist. It can also devalue the currency and diminish user trust in the currency.

Dow Jones & Company, Inc. (also known simply as Dow Jones) is an American publishing firm owned by News Corp, and led by CEO Almar Latour. The company publishes The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch, Mansion Global, Financial News and Private Equity News.

Drecom Co., Ltd. (株式会社ドリコム, Kabushiki Gaisha Dorikomu) is a Japanese software, web, video game development and video game publishing company. Subsidiaries Drecom Media and DRE Novels publish light novels.

Electronic billing or electronic bill payment and presentment, is when a seller such as company, organization, or group sends its bills or invoices over the internet, and customers pay the bills electronically. This replaces the traditional method where invoices are sent in paper form and payments are done by manual means such as sending cheques.

Electronic business (also known as online business or e-business) is any kind of business or commercial activity that includes sharing information across the internet. Commerce constitutes the exchange of products and services between businesses, groups, and individuals; and can be seen as one of the essential activities of any business.

Electronic lien and title, also known as ELT, is a program offered by various US States allowing for the electronic exchange of lien and title information with lienholders in lieu of a paper certificate of title.

Electronics for Imaging, Inc. (EFI) is an international company based in Silicon Valley that specializes in digital printing technology.

Email spam, also referred to as junk email, spam mail, or simply spam, refers to unsolicited messages sent in bulk via email. The term originates from a Monty Python sketch, where the name of a canned meat product, "Spam", is used repetitively, mirroring the intrusive nature of unwanted emails. Since the early 1990s, spam has grown significantly, with estimates suggesting that by 2014, i

Ember Sword was a planned massively multiplayer online role-playing sandbox blockchain game developed by Bright Star Studios for macOS and Windows. Presented from a three-dimensional isometric perspective, Ember Sword had players battle against each other or non-player characters, enhancing their character's abilities by equipping different weapons and armor. Players were able to trade w

Energy Future Holdings Corporation was an electric utility company headquartered in Energy Plaza in Downtown Dallas, Texas, United States. The majority of the company's power generation was through coal and nuclear power plants. From 1998 to 2007, the company was known as TXU Corporation until its $45 billion leveraged buyout by KKR, TPG, and Goldman Sachs Alternatives. That purchase was

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the integrated management of main business processes, often in real time and mediated by software and technology. ERP is usually referred to as a category of business management software typically a suite of integrated applications that an organization can use to collect, store, manage and interpret data from many business activities.

Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (aka ER Accelerator, or ERA) is an American seed accelerator launched in January 2011.

Envestnet, Inc. is an American financial technology corporation which develops and distributes wealth management software and products to financial advisors and institutions. Its main product is an advisory platform that integrates the services and software used by financial advisors in wealth management.

EOS.IO is a blockchain protocol based on the cryptocurrency EOS. The smart contract platform claims to eliminate transaction fees and also conduct millions of transactions per second. It was developed by the private company Block.one and launched in 2017. The platform was later released as open-source software.

Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, Maryland. Following its first commercial video game release, ZZT (1991), the company became Epic MegaGames, Inc. in early 1992 and brought on Mark Rei

Epicor Software Corporation is a business software company based in Austin, Texas founded in 1972. Its products are aimed at the manufacturing, distribution, retail and services industries.

Seiko Epson Corporation, commonly known as Epson, is a Japanese multinational corporation headquartered in Suwa, Nagano, Japan, and one of the world's largest manufacturers of printers and information- and imaging-related equipment. Its products include inkjet, dot matrix, thermal and laser printers for consumer, business and industrial use, scanners, laptop and desktop computers, video

Equihash is a memory-hard Proof-of-work algorithm introduced by the University of Luxembourg's Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) at the 2016 Network and Distributed System Security Symposium. The algorithm is based on a generalization of the Birthday problem which finds colliding hash values. It has severe time-space trade-offs but concedes vulnerability

ERPNext is a free and open-source integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) software developed by an Indian software company Frappe Technologies Pvt. Ltd. It is built on the MariaDB database system using Frappe, a Python based server-side framework.

An escrow is a contractual arrangement in which a third party (the stakeholder or escrow agent) receives and disburses money or property for the primary transacting parties, with the disbursement dependent on conditions agreed to by the transacting parties. Examples include an account established by a broker for holding funds on behalf of the broker's principal or some other person until

Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether (abbreviation: ETH) is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Among cryptocurrencies, ether is second only to bitcoin in market capitalization. It is open-source software.

Ethereum Classic is a blockchain-based distributed computing platform that offers smart contract (scripting) functionality. Ethereum Classic was created in a hard fork with the mainline Ethereum blockchain, and maintains the original, unaltered ledger prior to the attempt to reverse a hacking attack on the Ethereum-based DAO in July 2016. It is now the largest smart contract platform sec

ETKA is the official electronic parts catalogue for Volkswagen Group motor vehicles. Launched in 1989, ETKA superseded the older parts books and microfilm-based catalogues. ETKA is an abbreviation from the German: Elektronischer Teilekatalog. It is produced for Volkswagen AG by the Munich-based specialist automotive industry information systems software publisher LexCom Informationssys

eToro Group Ltd. is an Israeli multinational company that operates an electronic trading platform and social trading system. The company is organized in the British Virgin Islands and headquartered in Bnei Brak, Israel.

Euronet is an American provider of global electronic payment services with headquarters in Leawood, Kansas. It offers automated teller machines (ATM), point of sale (POS) services, credit/debit card services, currency exchange and other electronic financial services and payments software. Among others, it provides the prepaid subsidiaries Transact, PaySpot, epay, Movilcarga, TeleRecarga

European DataWarehouse (EDW) is a Securitisation Repository designated by both the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). European DataWarehouse GmbH is part of the ABS Loan Level Data initiative established by the European Central Bank that is engaged in providing data warehousing services and full disclosure for investors in asset-ba

The European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) is a group established on 16 December 2010 in response to the euro area crisis. It is tasked with the macro-prudential oversight of the financial system within the European Union in order to contribute to the prevention or mitigation of systemic risks to financial stability in the EU. It shall contribute to the smooth functioning of the internal ma

An Extended Validation (EV) Certificate is a certificate conforming to X.509 that proves the legal entity of the owner and is signed by a certificate authority key that can issue EV certificates. EV certificates can be used in the same manner as any other X.509 certificates, including securing web communications with HTTPS and signing software and documents. Unlike domain-validated certi

Eye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of gaze (where one is looking) or the motion of an eye relative to the head. An eye tracker is a device for measuring eye positions and eye movement. Eye trackers are used in research on the visual system, in psychology, in psycholinguistics, marketing, as an input device for human-computer interaction, and in product design. In a

FAB Universal was a US-based company formed from a long series of mergers and acquisitions, including Liberated Syndication, Wizzard Software and Digital Entertainment International. The company ceased operations in 2017.

Facebook Credits was a virtual currency that enabled people to purchase items in games and non-gaming applications on the Facebook Platform. One U.S. dollar was the equivalent of 10 Facebook Credits. Facebook Credits were available in 15 currencies including U.S. dollars, pound sterling, euros, and Danish kroner. Facebook was hoping eventually to expand Credits into a micropayment system

FactSet Research Systems Inc., trading as FactSet, is an American financial data and software company headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, United States. The company provides integrated data and software. For fiscal year 2024, FactSet's total ASV and professional services revenues were $2.2 billion. FactSet's total market value is approximately $17 billion.

Fairmat is a free-of-charge multi-platform software that allows to model financial contracts (e.g. a derivative contract) or projects with many contingencies (e.g. a Real Options model) by decomposing it into basic parts. Complex structures and dependencies are modelled using a graphical interface. Virtually any pay-off function and asset class( from interest rate derivatives to equity-l

FatKat, Inc. is a privately held company founded in 1999 by Raymond C. Kurzweil, an author, inventor, and futurist. He's perhaps best known for creating an optical character recognition system that – in conjunction with a flatbed scanner and text-to-speech synthesizer – reads text aloud to the sight-impaired. FatKat is an acronym derived from "financial accelerating transactions from Kur

FatWallet was a comparison shopping website, centering on a set of forums that allowed users to publish deals and rebate offers on products and services, with computer-related products and electronics most prominent in the listings. It was headquartered in Beloit, Wisconsin, and ceased operation on October 9, 2017. In 2002, the site was involved in a legal dispute with several major reta

fDi Intelligence is an English-language bi-monthly news and foreign direct investment (FDI) publication, providing an up-to-date review of global investment activity. The A4 glossy pages reach a circulation of 15,488 ABC audited, active corporate and crossborder investment professionals across the world.

Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) is a type of web tracking. It groups people into "cohorts" based on their browsing history for the purpose of interest-based advertising. FLoC was being developed as a part of Google's Privacy Sandbox initiative, which includes several other advertising-related technologies with bird-themed names. Despite "federated learning" in the name, FLoC does no

A feelie is a physical item included to supplement a video game. Likely deriving their name from the fictional media in Aldous Huxley's 1932 novel Brave New World, feelies were popularized by the American video game company Infocom in the 1980s and subsequently adopted by such companies as Origin Systems and Sierra Entertainment in the United States and Namco and ASCII in Japan. Becoming

Filecoin (⨎) is a cryptocurrency intended to be a blockchain-based cooperative digital storage and data retrieval method. It was developed by Protocol Labs and shares some ideas from InterPlanetary File System allowing users to rent unused hard drive space. Filecoin is an open protocol and uses a blockchain to record participation in the network. Transactions are made using the blockchai

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is a bureau within the United States Department of the Treasury that collects and analyzes information about financial transactions to combat domestic and international money laundering, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes.

Financial cryptography is the use of cryptography in applications in which financial loss could result from subversion of the message system. Financial cryptography is distinguished from traditional cryptography in that for most of recorded history, cryptography has been used almost entirely for military and diplomatic purposes.

The Financial Intelligence Authority (FIA) is a government agency established by the Parliament of Uganda to monitor, investigate, and prevent money laundering in the country. It is also responsible for the enforcement of Uganda's anti-money laundering laws and the monitoring of all financial transactions inside the country's borders.

Financial management is the business function concerned with profitability, expenses, cash, and credit. These are often grouped together under the rubric of maximizing the value of the firm for stockholders. The discipline is then tasked with the "efficient acquisition and deployment" of both short- and long-term financial resources, to ensure the objectives of the enterprise are achieve

Financial modeling

Financial repression refers to government implementation of policies to channel domestic funds to the public sector that in a deregulated market environment would go elsewhere. These policies are used to reduce the government's debt-to-GDP ratio.

Financial risk management is the practice of protecting economic value in a firm by managing exposure to financial risk - principally credit risk and market risk, with more specific variants as listed aside - as well as some aspects of operational risk. As for risk management more generally, financial risk management requires identifying the sources of risk, measuring these, and crafting

The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC; French: Centre d'analyse des opérations et déclarations financières du Canada) is the national financial intelligence agency of Canada.

Firo, formerly known as Zcoin, is a cryptocurrency aimed at using cryptography to provide better privacy for its users compared to other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

Flooz.com was a dot-com venture, now defunct, based in New York City that went online in February 1999. It was promoted by comic actress Whoopi Goldberg in a series of television advertisements. Started by iVillage co-founder Robert Levitan, the company attempted to establish a currency unique to Internet merchants, somewhat similar in concept to airline frequent flyer programs or grocer