JPMorgan Chase made waves today with the filing — or re-filing — of a patent application for a payments platform that includes “virtual cash.” The move was first noted by LetsTalkBitcoin, which called Chase’s move “an attempt to launch a bitcoin-killer.” The patent application is dated Nov. 28, Thanksgiving Day, though LetsTalkBitcoin suggests it was first filed August 5. It actually appears the patent application was filed first in 1999 and amended in 2003, and amended again more recently. So the ideas in the document are not particularly fresh, but are still intriguing as a look at how the bank viewed, and perhaps continues to view, anonymous electronic payments. The basic process being described in the patent is a familiar one to users of PayPal or bitcoins: A computer-implemented method of providing an anonymous payment from a mobile device to a payee device to enable an electronic payment between a payer and a payee without provision of an account number or name from the payer, the method comprising: storing payer information and instructions in a computer memory at a host server. In the application, the payment technology is called Internet Pay Anyone (IPA) and the funds are stored in a Virtual Private [...]
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