Ideas to encourage the use of Ripple Pay

[Vinnie]

I'd like this topic to be a place where we can discuss how to promote/
spread the word about Ripple Pay at the local and world wide level.

An idea I have is to create a local networking website independent of
Ripple Pay. The idea would be to create a market place where people
can come together to offer goods and services to one another and
encourage the use of Ripple Pay, intially as a system of account and
later as the primary means of payment. The site could offer
individual profiles along with a feed back system, a list of
references and general terms for payment. This is something that
could start on the local level, which is where people are most likely
to already have trusting relationships with one another that would
make Ripple Pays extension of credit possible. If this sort of
organizational project could happen in multiple communities we could
build a base and reach the critical mass neeeded to make Ripple Pay a
liquid currency.

[Ryan Fugger]

An idea that occurs to me is to start with an existing cooperative of
some kind -- a food store would be ideal, although others could work
too -- where members can work in exchange for the coop's products
and/or services. Keep track of credits in Ripple: each member
connects to the coop and offers it some amount of credit, and then
gets paid and buys products using that account. Then, anyone
connected to a member can shop at the coop through the member's Ripple
account. Eventually this might grow to become a network of coops...

Ultimately, though, I think that Ripple will grow most easily where it
interfaces with established currencies. Imagine there's a Ripple user
who will exchange Paypal for Ripple credit, and vice-versa. Those who
are connected to this paypal broker can effectively paypal between
them with no transaction fees. Imagine there's another user who will
exchange e-gold for Ripple credit. If I'm connected to both the
e-gold and paypal brokers, and I have a balance with one of them, I'm
automatically a broker between paypal and e-gold, or at least their
Ripple surrogates. Now all those connected to the e-gold broker can
use their e-gold to send paypal credits to those connected to the
paypal user, and vice-versa. There are lots of possibilities.

There are at least a few hurdles to clear before we can use Ripple in this way:

* Users need to be able to charge a fee on certain through
transactions, as friction against rampant speculation between
different currencies.

* Users need more control over the exchange rates they offer. Right
now Ripple gets forex market rates daily and all exchanges use those,
although users may opt out by refusing to perform conversions on
through payments.

* The system must be able to weigh these variable transaction costs
when it is searching for payment paths, find the cheapest path or set
of paths, and present it to the user for approval before committing
the transaction.

* A good external API into the system so interactions can be automated.

* Security would need to be beefed up.

There are probably a few more things as well.

Ryan

[Vinnie]

Ryan Fugger wrote:
> An idea that occurs to me is to start with an existing cooperative of
> some kind -- a food store would be ideal, although others could work
> too -- where members can work in exchange for the coop's products
> and/or services.

Excellent idea. My wife and I are involved with our neighborhood's
local grocery co-op and will be vendors at this season's farmer's
market that the co-op hosts. I'd love to spread the word through that
network. It would be helpful if there were fliers/brochures that
could be downloaded, printed out and distributed as I wouldn't want to
unintentionally misrepresent Ripple Pay in my attempts to explain it
to others. Something tangible and "official" would be nice. Do you
have anything like this?

Our Co-op already uses a credit system on paper with its working
members. The problem I see is this: what would make Ripple Pay more
convenient at the register? Currently, we have a log book to keep
track of hours worked and the corresponding amount of credit
available. Is there a simpler interface that can be used other than
installing a computer at the register? I can see having to log on and
off everytime someone wants to buy something being a barrier of
convenience.

[Daniel Reeves]

[this was bounced when I tried to send from dre...@yootles.com]

I'm very excited about Vinnie's idea of tapping into existing social
networks and Ryan's idea of starting with a food co-op sounds perfect.
We've been talking about building this into Yahoo 360 (Yahoo's
version of friendster). Now that facebook has opened up their API,
that's another possibility.

Vinnie, good point about interface. What do you think about an
internet-connected cell phone on which you could enter amount and the
customer a pin number? Cheap, easy, portable and very easy to build
as soon as Ryan has an API.

Daniel Reeves (Ryan's friend/colleague/competitor at yootles.com and
Yahoo Research)

--
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves - - search://"Daniel Reeves"

[Ryan Fugger]

On 2/19/07, Vinnie <vrin...@themedian.org> wrote:

> Excellent idea. My wife and I are involved with our neighborhood's
> local grocery co-op and will be vendors at this season's farmer's
> market that the co-op hosts. I'd love to spread the word through that
> network. It would be helpful if there were fliers/brochures that
> could be downloaded, printed out and distributed as I wouldn't want to
> unintentionally misrepresent Ripple Pay in my attempts to explain it
> to others. Something tangible and "official" would be nice. Do you
> have anything like this?
>

You might print up the text from one of these:

http://ripplepay.com/about/
http://ripplepay.com/faq/
http://ripplepay.com/essay/
http://ripple.sourceforge.net/
http://ripple.sourceforge.net/faq.html

> Our Co-op already uses a credit system on paper with its working
> members. The problem I see is this: what would make Ripple Pay more
> convenient at the register? Currently, we have a log book to keep
> track of hours worked and the corresponding amount of credit
> available. Is there a simpler interface that can be used other than
> installing a computer at the register? I can see having to log on and
> off everytime someone wants to buy something being a barrier of
> convenience.
>

Yes, as Daniel suggests, an SMS text-message interface through a cell
phone would probably be the easiest thing to get going. Customers
could even use their own phone if they didn't like the idea of
inputting their PIN on your phone. Or perhaps they should be able to
print up a sheet of single-use PINs...

I'm busy with a few separate projects these days, but hopefully a few
of us here can put something like this together in the next month or
so.

Ryan