Theses in Process

Electronic payment systems: technical foundations, risks and potentials

Type:
Bachelor Thesis Business Information Systems
    Status:
    in process
    Tutor:

    Abstract

    Motivation

    Driven by innovations in ICT and in part by societal developments, the means by which we conduct payments is changing – not only in terms of the particular technologies used, such as payment by smart phone or by means of an RFID chip embedded in your banking card – but also in terms of what fundamentally "economic" transactions entail and especially how these economic transactions are carried out. For example. concerning the latter block-chain based technologies such as bitcoin or lightcoin allow us to decentralize economic transactions, i.e. without having to rely on a centralized authority like a bank.

    Description

    In this thesis, you first of all explore what, exactly, the characteristics of economic transactions are, and subsequently provide a state of the art of emerging payment system technologies that support and/or enable these characteristics. Going beyond this, you preferably explore different possible scenarios for how electronic payments are carried out in the future, and how these can be potentially enabled or supported by different payment technologies.

    Literature

    • Luther, W. J. (2016). Bitcoin and the future of digital payments. The Independent Review, 20(3), 397-404.
    • Böhme, R., et al. (2015): "Bitcoin: Economics, technology, and governance." The Journal of Economic Perspectives 29.2, 213-238.
    • Dodgson, M., Gann, D., Wladawsky-Berger, I., Sultan, N., & George, G. (2015). Managing digital money. Academy of Management Journal, 58(2), 325-333.
    • Case, Karl E., and Ray C. Fair. Principles of microeconomics. Pearson Education, 2014, 11th edition
    • Ali, Robleh and Barrdear, John and Clews, Roger and Southgate, James, Innovations in Payment Technologies and the Emergence of Digital Currencies (September 16, 2014). Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin 2014 Q3.