Electronic Money

Electric Money sounds like a good name for a rap group circa 1987. Electronic Money has too many syllables...no flow. No Boogaloo.

But we're here to talk electronic money, so here we go.

Electronic money, or e-money, is like the digital version of cash. You don't carry it around in your wallet, or stuff it in your mattress (or stuff it anywhere else if your misspending your Friday nights). Instead, it exists as ones and zeros in some computer somewhere.

Don't confuse e-money with digital currencies, like Bitcoin. Bitcoin is also e-money, but your dollars (or euros or yen or zloty or whatever) can be e-money as well. When you're paying for stuff with your phone...blissfully wandering around in a consumerist stupor, like in those Apple commercials...you're using e-money, just as if you were hiring a hitman off the dark web.