ANNOUNCING THE BLUENOTES ECASH TOOLKIT FOR DEVELOPERS
The First Commercial Toolkit for Anonymous Ecash Transactions
PALO ALTO, Calif. September 24, 1997 — BlueMoney Software Corporation
today announced BlueNotes(tm), the world’s first commercial software
toolkit for building financial applications with private electronic cash
payments.
The BlueNotes Ecash Toolkit contains an Applications Programming Interface
(“API”) to help software developers enable ecash payments within their
software products. It is compatible with the ecash issued by Mark Twain
Bancshares of St. Louis, Missouri, and other banks around the world that
use ecash “mints” built by Digicash bv of Amsterdam.
Previously, no commercially supported ecash API has been available to
developers of web sites and software products. The BlueNotes Toolkit
fulfills this demand, allowing the quick and easy integration of ecash
payments into web sites, browsers, electronic wallets, cash registers, and
other applications.
“We are filling a void in the electronic marketplace,” said John Sweet,
Chairman and CEO of the BlueMoney Software Corporation. “We are the first
company to provide a stable, supported toolkit for bringing ecash payments
into everyday use.”
The most unique characteristic of BlueNotes is the privacy it creates. All
purchases with BlueNotes can be “payor anonymous,” meaning that people can
protect their identities from third parties, such as marketing agencies,
who may be interested in obtaining personal profiles without a person’s
knowledge or consent.
“In other words, BlueNotes creates Personal Ecash,” said Mr. Sweet. “It
automatically gives people the kind of privacy that we often take for
granted when we go shopping in real life. Without BlueNotes, our privacy is
at serious risk the instant we begin shopping on the Internet, or anytime
we pay using credit cards.”
The BlueNotes Toolkit is intended for use by software companies, CGI
programmers, and OEM businesses, not for merchants. By the end of this
year, however, BlueMoney Software Corporation expects to announce support
for BlueNotes in other products which will help merchants establish
commercial web sites without programming. Meanwhile, the BlueNotes Toolkit
will continue to be available to all software companies who wish to have
electronic cash provided from their software applications.
The BlueNotes Toolkit has diverse applicability to electronic commerce. Not
only does BlueNotes protect people when they are shopping, the BlueNotes
Toolkit also provides essential technology for all kinds of payment
systems, such as airline frequent-flyer programs, microtransactions, online
banking, and even shopping at the neighborhood grocery store.
People can download BlueNotes Ecash onto almost any digital media, and then
use it for payment anywhere in the world. “With BlueNotes,” says Mr. Sweet,
“the only ‘smart card’ you need is a floppy disk.”
# # #
About BlueMoney
BlueMoney Software Corporation is a privately held venture specializing in
software for secure Internet transactions. The company was founded in May
1996 by John Sweet, President and CEO; Jeremey Barrett, Chief Technology
Officer; and Ben Kavanagh, Vice President of Operations. The company is
headquartered in Palo Alto, California. BlueMoney and BlueNotes are
trademarks (TM) of the BlueMoney Software Corporation. Other names
mentioned are either trademarks or registered trademarks of their
respective owners.
The BlueNotes Ecash Toolkit is available for download at
“www.bluemoney.com” and is free for individual, recreational, and
educational use. For its utilization at a single Web site, BlueNotes is
available for $249.00. For more broad distribution and bundling into
third-party products, the BlueNotes Toolkit is available for OEM use, and
BlueMoney offers software integration services for these OEM products.
For more product and company information, please contact:
Mara Velasco
Director of Public Relations
BlueMoney Software Corporation
415-322-9288
mnv@bluemoney.com
