CyberCash, Inc. was an internet payment service for

electronic commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...

, headquartered in

Reston, Virginia Reston is a census-designated place in Fairfax County, Virginia and a principal city of the Washington metropolitan area. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, Reston's population was 63,226. Founded in 1964, Reston was influenced by the Garden City movem ...

. It was founded in August 1994 by Daniel C. Lynch (who served as chairman), William N. Melton (who served as president and CEO, and later chairman),

Steve Crocker Stephen D. Crocker (born October 15, 1944) is the inventor of the Request for Comments series, authoring the first RFC and many more. He attended Van Nuys High School, as did Vint Cerf and Jon Postel. Crocker received his bachelor's degree (196 ...

(Chief Technology Officer), and Bruce G. Wilson. The company initially provided an online wallet software to consumers and provided software to merchants to accept credit card payments. Later, they additionally offered "CyberCoin," a micropayment system modeled after the NetBill research project at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

, which they later licensed. At the time, the

U.S. government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a fede ...

had a short-lived restriction on the export of cryptography, making it illegal to provide encryption technology outside the United States. CyberCash obtained an exemption from the

Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other nati ...

, which concluded that it would be easier to create encryption technology from scratch than to extract it out of Cyber-Cash's software. In 1995, the company proposed RFC 1898, CyberCash Credit Card Protocol Version 0.8. The company went public on February 19, 1996, with the symbol "CYCH" and its shares rose 79% on the first day of trading. In 1998, CyberCash bought ICVerify, makers of computer-based credit card processing software, and in 1999 added another software company to their lineup, purchasing Tellan Software. In January 2000, a teenage Russian hacker nicknamed "Maxus" announced that he had cracked CyberCash's ICVerify application; the company denied this, stating that ICVerify was not even in use by the purportedly hacked organization. On January 1, 2000, many users of CyberCash's ICVerify application fell victim to the

Y2K Bug The year 2000 problem, also known as the Y2K problem, Y2K scare, millennium bug, Y2K bug, Y2K glitch, Y2K error, or simply Y2K refers to potential computer errors related to the formatting and storage of calendar data for dates in and after ...

, causing double recording of credit card payments through their system. Although CyberCash had already released a Y2K-compliant update to the software, many users had not installed it.

Bankruptcy

The company filed for Chapter 11

bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor ...

on March 11, 2001. VeriSign acquired the Cybercash assets (except for ICVerify) and name a couple of months later. On November 21, 2005 PayPal (already an eBay company) acquired VeriSign's payment services, including Cybercash.

References

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External links

CyberCash opens Net to small change
(News.com, September 30, 1996)

(News.com, August 20, 1998)
Cybercash Disputes Hacker's Claim
(Internet News, January 11, 2000) Payment systems Electronic funds transfer Financial technology companies Mobile payments Online payments Payment service providers American companies established in 1994 Financial services companies established in 1994 1994 establishments in Virginia Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2001

Bankruptcy

See also

References

External links