Digital Economy, E-money and Developing Countries
3. Some fears of e-commerce
If we assume robustness in electronic payment systems, what will be the expectable bad consequences for DC candidates to e-commerce?
- Fiscal and monetary instability: e-commerce facilitates capital mobility and may provoke tax evasion. It could destabilize exchange rate policy. Some experts mention the ability of big international firms to create their own virtual e-money. Experts are not astonished to see Microsoft or American Express creating their own money BILL or AMEX. Their values are supposed to be evaluated by the market forces of supply and demand. This could create a real risk of money laundering. Some fans of liberalization think that no need to have a central bank to regulate monetary policy. The remind that before several centuries, there were no central banks and peoples survived very well, by using market forces only. Digital economy increases productivity and decrease prices. Tax revenues are expected to slow down. This rushes some experts to sustain the limitation of governmental intervention in economy, especially in monetary policy.
- Cultural risks: Some persons are afraid of misusing internet and from bad sites. However, we suppose that new technology can always be used in both ways. When compared with TV and reception dishes, internet is promising and useful. The low wages in DC oblige people, searching better leisure, to employ their little saving in their lonely sumptuary investment (a TV and dish). No firm can find a spectator spending most time in front of screen, better than this one. He can receive continuously without any problem any advertisement. Concerning internet, it is very useful to the student looking for articles, for doctors searching recent researches…
- Scarcity of experts: Building new sites on internet is not a simple task. It need experts in programming and designing, but it necessitate adaptability with local and national specificity (Languages, preferences, tastes…). Now, we remark new sites designed quickly in which firms invest big amounts. We consider that this attitudes as a waste of fortune.
- Targeted marketing risk: Purchasing online may leads to register sufficient information to send letters of advertising later. If you buy a travel ticket on line, you may receive continuously messages for others trips and travels. This may disturb clients, who may suffer and refute e-commerce.
- Changing mentality: Investing in e-commerce can't be limited to some computers, web sites and others hardware or software… In DC, these kinds of investments must go with radical changes in financial, productive and stock infrastructure and procedures. With the high expansion in potential market, we must expect high variability in demand effective volume. This will necessitate a real transformation in financing methods and subcontracting procedures. Therefor, we can foresee a serious threats to the traditional trade and industrial sector.
- Adaptability between different payment systems inside and outside countries: We expect that there will be coordination among different payment systems inside the country and abroad.
- Software piracy: All firms try now to computerize their business. Generally, major part of software in DC is copied illegally. Signature of international agreements on trade and liberalization may oblige them to pay suddenly enormous amount for royalties and intellectual property rights. In other word, DC must care of these probable payments for next periods of the post protectionism.
- Who do control internet procedures? And could we trust it completely? United States is the central reference for IP distribution. This presents a serious potential risk, especially for DC. Generally, no country accepts the IP of another. But US can use her technical advance and her information banks to damage the functioning of DC net software.
- Risk of vandalism: Imagine dishonest competition, or vandalism acts, when sending automatically a huge number of virtual messages in order to occupy program and overloading systems!