Jurisdiction Paper

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					ABA Project on Jurisdiction and the Internet Banking & Payment Systems

This portion of the project will focus directly on the jurisdictional issues that arise with respect to Banking and Payment Systems as a result of electronic commerce within “cyberspace.” Three foundation principles, which are employed generally throughout the work of the Project, are used for identifying the issues addressed in this section:

1. 2. 3.

Does the issue arise because of electronic commerce over the Internet? Is the issue solely a banking/payment systems issue? Is the issue a jurisdiction issue?

Banking In this section of the Project Report, the term “banking” is used in a generic and functional sense without any relation to the formal designations and classifications of particular entities under applicable laws. For our purposes, a bank, a savings bank, a savings and loan association, a trust company, a credit union, a building and loan society, a small loan company, etc. are all involved in “banking.” Further, securities brokerage firms, mutual funds, pension plans, credit card issuers, and other entities that are not traditionally labeled as “banks” are functionally involved in “banking” to the extent that they take deposits, transfer funds to third parties, and/or make loans (as they in fact routinely do.) Nor does this paper exclude functions from the concept of “banking” because they are performed, in whole or in part, by governmental and quasi-governmental institutions rather than by private companies, or because they are performed on a secondary market level rather than a primary market level. A quasi-governmental entity that funds loans that are essentially brokered to it through the secondary market by primary lenders is performing a “banking” function, just as much as a


traditional privately owned bank in the primary market. Indeed, since such a system is quite likely to be highly automated in developed countries, it is even more directly related to the issues addressed through this Project.1 Further, it appears to be a general phenomenon that governmental and quasi-governmental entities that perform financial functions will seek to expand the range of their functioning. Whether this drive is based on an innate bureaucratic imperative, a normal desire of diversification, or other factors is unimportant. The fact is that they are significant participants in the banking system.

In general, therefore, the intent of this report is to focus on function, not on entity, and to try to see beyond the particular regulatory classifications of particular jurisdictions. Such a broad conceptual approach is necessary for this discussion. The “stuff” of banking and payment systems is money. Money is, and always has been, an element of a shared belief system, a piece of consensus reality. Today, money -- whether it is legal tender or e-money -- is principally evidenced as a digital file. The technology exists to cause any money to be evidenced by a digital file. Indeed, any financial product can be evidenced as a digital file. This commonality of potentially being evidenced as a digital file underlies every financial product or service -- regardless of the type or location. Hence, any entity possessing adequate information processing technology can perform the functions of a “bank” (putting aside the legality of their doing so). Indeed, it is a fear not infrequently expressed by traditional depository institutions that their most potent future “banking” competitors may be software


In most jurisdictions, insurance companies, securities firms and government agencies are subject to different regulatory schemes as compared to traditional depository financial institutions. To the extent that insurance companies, securities firms, government agencies and other non-bank entities currently offer payment services or banking functions, these activities are generally (at least within the United States) handled by a bank in partnership with the insurance company, securities firm or government agency. Under U.S. law, a securities firm or insurance company could probably not provide these banking/payments activities directly to customers without first obtaining a banking charter or license. However, as more fully developed in this report, it is questionable how long such “entity” distinctions will continue as a matter of law. The US, for example, appears about to enact the most important revision of its banking laws since 1932, a revision that will directly result in significant blending of financial entity types in the US and should, because of competitive pressures, accelerate such blending in non-US markets. For the purposes of this report, the “process” is the issue, not the entity.



This opportunity for a broader range of competitors in the area of financial services creates issues in the areas of jurisdiction law referred to as “prescriptive” or “regulatory” jurisdiction, the question of which authority or authorities have the power to prescribe the rules that govern an activity. The oversight and control of the financial services systems in a particular state, province, or country has historically been an important government function. Financial services providers, in whatever form, have in modern times been subject to comprehensive examination, strict limitations, and direct oversight by their controlling government regulator. The extreme consequences of previous wide-spread failures within the financial services industry have demonstrated the importance to governments of maintaining a safe and sound financial services system.

Examples abound of the broad, societal consequences that ensued when governments failed to provide proper examination and supervision of financial services functions conducted in their territories. The world wide Depression of the 1930’s, the Savings and Loan Industry Bailout in the US in the late 1980’s, the related Canadian crisis with respect to trust companies, and the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990’s, each find among their proximate causes government’s failure to adopt correct regulatory policies3 with respect to their financial institutions and/or to adequately supervise various forms of providers of financial services. Given the importance of government’s role in regulating financial institutions, the jurisdictional question that arises is when and how may a government regulate financial


Currently, a customer cannot perform all traditional banking functions through the Internet (e.g., make a cash or check deposit to his or her deposit account, cash a check, or withdraw funds in the form of currency). Technology and business practices may develop to perform some of these functions through the Internet in the future, but that is not the case today. However, this report is intended to anticipate certain future banking or payments developments, such as electronic checks, that are not yet fully operational, as well as certain contributions of providers of financial services that have not yet become common.

For example, governmental policies that required certain classes of financial institutions to “borrow short and lend long” and simultaneously subjected them to restrictive usury laws set the stage for inevitable widespread failures among such institutions. When the government also insured the accounts of such institutions, a massive claim on the public treasury was equally inevitable. 3

institutions that operate within its territory via the Internet. Traditionally, regulatory jurisdiction was conveyed by a financial institution’s physical geography – if the institution establishes a branch in a particular territory, the institution must follow the rules of that territory governing that particular type of institution. May, and more importantly, how can a government regulate a financial institution whose only “physical” presence within its sovereignty consists of electrons flowing through the Internet to that government’s citizens, a mechanism through which, for all practical purposes, any financial institution can provide any financial service to any person anywhere in the world? Traditional Payment Systems

Applying the three foundation principles mentioned above yields the conclusion that traditional payment systems do not present significant “cyberspace” jurisdictional issues as a practical matter. Today, money moves around the world on a daily basis in vast amounts in as free and seamless a manner as it ever has in history, and nearly instantaneously for the great bulk of the transactions. These movements occur largely without incident and primarily through an established network of domestic financial entities and their correspondents, foreign financial entities, specialized governmental entities, and various service providers. In many countries these payment systems are subject to supervision and examination by the country’s banking regulators.4

The reasons for this nearly problem-free movement of money are many. The development and wide-spread use of technology that readily permits money and financial instruments to be evidenced as digital files, the development of high-speed computers and high-capacity transmission facilities, and the emergence of common and dominant currencies are but a few. However, five reasons are key from the legal point of view:


For example, a U.S. bank could not join a payments network either inside or outside the United States unless that network agreed to the examination/supervision of the U.S. bank regulatory authorities. In addition, the Bank Service Corporation Act gives the bank regulatory authorities direct jurisdiction over payments networks serving U.S. banks. As part of this examination/supervision, the U.S. bank regulators have imposed various conditions on the operation of these payment systems, such as various requirements related to risk management.



Any competent payment system must, by its nature, be designed to eliminate failures on the micro and macro levels. In layman’s terms, at the end of the day, everything must “balance” (debits equal credits). The system constantly checks for, and resolves, all account discrepancies, whether they occur in an individual’s checking account, a bank’s settlement account, or a government’s payment account, on a daily basis. It is the nature of a payment system that “at the end of the day” (literally and figuratively) all participants must know exactly where their accounts stand. Settlement accounts and established lines of credit guarantee that the payment process will result in a balanced system with the risk of loss (caused by any imbalance in payment order v. available funds) passed through to each participant who causes that imbalance. It is a testimony to the effectiveness of the global system that (except in the case of occasional local disturbances) this result occurs every day throughout the planet.


The rules and processes for local, national and international money transfers have become well established and carefully defined over many years (indeed, centuries). To a great degree, development of an electronic payments system happened decades ago as “money” was converted from a “paper-world” to a “cyber-world.” Vestiges of paper-based transactions still co-exist with electronic payments, mostly because the preferences of individual customers have not kept pace with the possibilities presented by technological advances. But the functionality of the payment system has been based in electronic exchanges of debits and credits at least since the late 1970’s. Even the financial institution that continues to mail its customers their cancelled paper checks each month long ago converted to processing the payments represented by those items electronically. Financial institutions eagerly await the day their customers move from receiving their cancelled checks in the mail to being satisfied with online access to image files of those checks. The financial institutions will still be performing exactly the same function, but the different technologies will make the services appear to be distinct.



At the core of local, national and international payment systems is an elaborate and constantly tended web of contracts, protocols, time-honored practices, consultative mechanisms, and personal relationships, all designed to produce swift and certain results without the need for contentious dispute resolution. To conduct transfers over the established payment systems, one must agree to abide by these “rules,” which allocate the burden and risk of loss in each transaction. In the case of an error or mistake, all participants know what their rights are, how to enforce them, and the party in error knows that it must accept responsibility to continue as a participant in the system.5


A substantial number of the contractual arrangements involved in the traditional payment system contain provisions stipulating the jurisdictional aspects of any issues that arise under the contracts, e.g., the applicable law, the judicial forum for dispute resolution, and applicable arbitration provisions. These agreements are between and among sophisticated parties with strong individual or collective bargaining power. Courts are generally willing to enforce provisions of this type among such parties (as opposed to contracts in which one of the parties is an individual). Thus, jurisdictional issues are contracted away.


Legal rules have developed that limit the exposure of consumers to liability. For example, in the United States, the Truth-in-Lending Act and the Electronic Funds Transfer Act generally limit the exposure of consumers on individual transactions to $50 as a matter of law. Programs are available that can reduce that exposure effectively to zero. This development reduces the likelihood that disputes -- the “stuff” of jurisdictional questions -- will arise. The potential consumer complaint becomes a claim involving the merchant, the merchant’s bank and the cardholder’s


In the typical credit card system (the “X” card), each participant in an X credit card transaction (cardholder, cardholder’s bank, merchant’s bank, merchant) is subject to a common agreement embodied in X’s rules. These rules are supplemented by bilateral agreements (required by the rules) between the cardholder and his/her bank, and between the merchant and its bank. These agreements address and resolve jurisdictional issues (assuming they are enforced under applicable law). Hence, Internet-based X card relationships and transactions raise no new jurisdictional issues under these agreements. 6

bank and is resolved, without raising jurisdictional issues, as a matter of contract among those parties. Globally, the sophisticated parties settle the claims among themselves on the basis of a netting process and regard losses as a cost of doing business against which they create reserves or purchase insurance. Consumers generally are aware that they are protected and derive a sense of confidence from this fact, which has been an essential factor in the expansion of electronic commerce on the retail level.

In short, the operational imperatives and legal structure of traditional payment systems are such that they do not generate disputes that require adjudication. As to any differences that might arise, solutions are provided for in advance by detailed agreements. The daily volume of global currency transactions averages in excess of 1.0 quadrillion of US dollars. The average daily volume on the FedWire, a principal component of the US payment system (discussed below) has exceeded 1.0 quadrillion US Dollars since 1997. If only a very small percentage of these daily transactions yielded disputes, such systems could not tolerate the clogging that would result from the accumulated burden of cases. Indeed, a virtuous cycle is at work: because there is vast volume, disputes are intolerable; and because disputes have not been tolerated, expansion of the volume has been enabled. This cycle has long been at work in the paper-world. The addition of computers and Internet communications have enhanced the cycle and accelerated its expansion and development.

Thus, the payments system has evolved in such a manner that jurisdictional questions are avoided. This is an important fact on two levels. First, this practice of avoiding jurisdictional conflicts is employed with respect to business-to-business electronic transactions generally. Second, as will be discussed later, these may be effective techniques for avoiding or minimizing jurisdictional conflicts in business-to-consumer electronic transactions as well.

So long as the commerce generated by and through the Internet interfaces with the established payment systems, issues of the type that the Project is to address will not be


presented. This is not to say that the system does not face major issues: computing capacity, bandwidth of transmission facilities, inconsistent file types, security, customer acceptance – to name only a few. The sheer magnitude of the operations of the international payment system virtually guarantees that there will be issues of many types. But they do not meet the criteria of the foundation principles in that they do not generate questions of jurisdiction. Alternative Payment Systems

One area of payment systems is developing within electronic commerce that does present some challenging jurisdictional issues. The Internet does pose the possibility that alternatives to the existing global payment system may arise. Indeed, electronic bartering and various forms of “e-currency” and “e-payments” are currently in use in some Internet transactions. These alternatives raise a number of issues with jurisdictional consequences because of their essentially closed nature. The whole notion of “electronic commerce” presupposes that payments must and will be exchanged between the parties. After all, what’s commerce without money? Currently, payments are made to both traditional and Internet providers of goods and services through three principal means: credit cards, debit instruments, and “Digital Currency.”6 The first two options are currently components of the traditional payment systems and, as explained above, disputes regarding their processing that have jurisdictional significance are rare. Credit card and debit card transactions work somewhat differently in the physical world than in the Internet world. However, the differences are without jurisdictional significance.

Any merchant who accepts credit card payments must sign an agreement either with the

Other systems, such as Electronic Bill Payment and Presentment (EBPP) are being developed and show considerable promise. However, as of this writing, they are still in nascent form globally. In basic terms, EBPP is a system whereby debtor and creditor settle their accounts through mutually agreed upon procedures at one or more mutually agreed upon websites. The EBPP website may be thought of an interface for arranging automatic clearinghouse (ACH) transfers; essentially, electronic debit orders from the payer to the beneficiary. As such, the process involves the current payment system and is not a true “alternative” in the context of this discussion. In any case, their developers have as a fundamental design criterion that they will not present jurisdictional issues as practical matter.


card system operator (e.g., Visa, MasterCard, American Express, etc.) or the merchant’s financial institution (which will process payments to the card system on behalf of the merchant and signs a separate agreement with the card system operator). The agreement will specify how all disputes between the various parties (merchant and customer, system operator and merchant, financial institution and customer, etc.) will be resolved and what individual rights each has within the system. Accepting these dispute resolution processes is one “price” the merchant pays for the right to use the credit card system as a mode of receiving payment.

It is important to distinguish between credit card transaction disputes generally and credit card transaction disputes with jurisdictional significance. Disputes involving credit card transactions are relatively common, usually involving unauthorized transactions (e.g. stolen cards), account statement errors, and dissatisfaction regarding goods and services. These disputes are dealt with in the context of the system operator agreements. The merchant’s bank, the card-issuing bank, the system operator, the merchant and the cardholder are all parties to various agreements with specific applicable laws and regulations, such as (in the United States) the Electronic Funds Transfer Act and Truth-in-Lending Act. Normally, these disputes are resolved by a “charge-back” against the merchant by the merchant’s bank.

Disputes regarding debit instruments are similarly resolved. These items usually constitute an order from the customer to their financial institution to pay an amount certain to the merchant. Conceptually, this process operates the same as the paper-based check. Instead of a piece of paper that contains these instructions changing hands from customer to merchant to the paying bank, the transaction is handled wholly by electronic messages. As a practical matter, even paper-based checks are usually truncated7 quickly into electronic information to speed the flow of funds and significantly reduce processing costs. As the debit instrument mirrors, in all practical respects, the traditional check, again all the parties’ rights and obligations have long been established through the traditional payment system.

“Truncation” refers to a process whereby paper-based checks are converted to ACH transfers. This increases the speed with which the creditor receives its funds and results in a debit to the payor’s checking account. The effects are the same as those produced by the use of a debt card. Typically, the retail merchant pays a fee to the operator of the truncation system similar to the fee that it pays with respect to debit card use.


Digital currency8 represents the newest wrinkle within Internet payment systems. At its base, digital currency represents a mutual agreement among that system’s participants to attribute a defined value to the modes of exchange designated by that system. Perhaps the concept is best illustrated by looking at its historical precedents.

Throughout the history of payment systems, alternative methods have developed to transfer value among that systems’ participants. One appropriate analogy to today’s emerging markets in digital currency is to review the use of alternative currencies in what were referred to in American history as “Company Towns.” As remote areas of the United States were industrialized, the advancement of commerce and trade could not be held back by the relatively slow expansion of the availability of financial services and the relative immaturity of the official currency system financial services. An alternative financial services system was needed. Local, isolated communities were often structured around a single employer, such as a coal mine or lumber camp. Workers for that employer were not paid in traditional, commonly recognized currencies, but instead were issued tokens or other forms of tangible representations of value. These tokens were often referred to as “script.” Those tokens were then used as the medium of exchange within that community. They could be used to purchase goods at the company-owned store or other services within the company’s town.

Within these company towns, using these tokens as an alternative currency had its advantages. In a practical sense, there was no need to issue “real” money since these isolated communities were wholly self-sufficient. The company that owned the enterprise providing employment, which generated wages to the workers in exchange for their labor, also owned or controlled all of the reasonable outlets for those wages. This closed economic system allowed for the development of a closed currency.9 To the company’s advantage, so long as its workers


“Digital Currency” is used in this context to refer generically to all forms of alternative payment systems either existing or to be developed to facilitate electronic commerce. The common element to these payment systems is that they involve exchanges of tokens or other representations of value that have no direct bearing to recognized currencies issued by a government. 9 As will be explored more fully later in this report, all currencies represent nothing more or less than an agreed-to medium to exchange value at an agreed-to rate. The promise of a government to recognize and honor that medium 10

accumulated value only in a form recognized solely within that community, its workers were tied to that area and that enterprise interminably. The company set the wages and concomitantly the prices for the goods and services purchased with those wages. All profits at every level of commerce within that closed system inured to the benefit of that company.

The alternative systems being developed to facilitate electronic commerce share many of the characteristics with these company towns and their tokens. The “currency” issued within these systems may be exchanged only among participants within that system. It has value only to the other participants and has no recognized value outside of the system. For all practical purposes, any value built through the accumulation or exchange of this alternative currency can be used only within the context of that system.

Consequently, these alternative payment systems may be thought of as being, in varying degrees, independent of the traditional system and but still connected to it at some point. Alternatives are being used or under development because some of the inherent limitations within the traditional system constrict or inhibit facets of electronic commerce. Credit card payments take several weeks to process before the merchant receives credit. Each participant on that payment chain shaves some percentage off the transfer, leaving the merchant to actually receive less than the full value originally exchanged. Both debit instruments and credit card payments bring exhaustive consumer protections that ultimately work against the interest of the merchant and its correspondent bank. Security concerns make some consumers reluctant to provide the information necessary to effect either type of transaction. Unless these limitations can be overcome, alternative payment systems may evolve into the development of an entirely new construct that is a “super-set” of the traditional system and the emerging alternative systems.

Currently, alternative payment systems are essentially retail systems rather than wholesale

at those values is what lends credence to currencies as a medium of exchange. The variable factors in establishing that value are the strength of the government making that promise and the underlying strength of the economy whose government has given the promise. Using “e-dollars” to purchase software from a web site does not differ in concept from using real US dollars to effect the same transaction. However, one medium of exchange is backed by the full faith and credit of the government of the largest economic power in the world; the other by a substantially smaller and less powerful authority. 11

systems. To the extent that they arise at all, jurisdiction issues arise almost exclusively on the retail level. Wholesale systems are still the province of the traditional players, and as a practical matter, the alternative payment systems are just short-cuts to the larger players. Fundamentally, at some point the alternative payment system must “convert” its accumulated value to something “real” by transferring to a recognized and accepted form of currency outside of the closed environment. This is a necessary and sufficient consequence, since no economic system is capable of isolated self-sustenance in the modern world, especially no system built on the world-wide platform of the Internet.

The US data is instructive in this regard. Nearly all wholesale payments in the United States are conducted electronically via governmental and non-governmental payment system networks. Measured in terms of dollar value, approximately 90 percent of all non-cash payments in the United States are made by electronic transfer. Currently, retail transactions conducted electronically through the Internet are only a small fraction of the whole. Further, in the US, cash and checks are used for payment in more than 80 percent of the number of retail transactions and about 30 percent of the dollar value of such transactions.

In the Internet environment, those cash and checks can be replaced by any token of value that the other participants in that system agree to accept. But unless and until those alternative systems become sufficiently pervasive and diverse enough for the participants to be self-sufficient in their economy (if, indeed, attaining such a goal is possible in the context of our current global economy), they must at some point rely on the traditional payment systems and the agreements and structures that underpin it. Overview of Traditional Payment System Governmental Payment Systems

Most countries have a central bank or other office/agency/enterprise of a governmental nature that overlays the payment systems process in that country. The key to moving money


into, out of, or through that country is to tap into this system. US System

The Federal Reserve System in U.S., with components such as the Automated Clearing House, FedWire, and the Fed’s item settlement services, is an example of such a system. The FedWire is a computer network that connects the 12 Federal Reserve Banks with approximately 20,000 domestic financial institutions that are depository institutions whose accounts are insured by the US government (for example, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund). Systems of Major Economic Trading Powers [To be added)] International Networks/Transactions

Some “private” companies have developed payment system networks that facilitate commerce across international borders (Clearing House Interbank Payment System or CHIPS, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications or SWIFT10, VISA, MasterCard, AmEx). Essentially, these companies facilitate transactions by agreeing to act as an intermediary between a seller and a purchaser. They add stability and certainty to the transaction by defining the rules that govern it. A seller knows what it has to do to be entitled to payment under the system, and a buyer knows what obligation it is assuming by using the system as a medium of payment. The value of this certainty is to allow an unknown buyer and seller to recognize that a known set of rules will govern the transaction, facilitating a broader acceptance on the part of both parties.


SWIFT is a cooperative organized under Belgian law, with headquarters near Brussels. It provides communications services to the international banking industry, including payments and administrative messages and, more recently, securities settlements. SWIFT is owned by member banks, including the central banks of most countries. The U.S. Federal Reserve is not a member, but participates in certain types of payments. Securities brokers and dealers, clearing houses and depository institutions, exchanges for securities, and travelers checks issuers also participate. 13

These common rules are established by contract. The seller must agree to abide by the system’s rules to be guaranteed of payment by following them. The buyer, or more commonly the buyer’s financial institution that acts as its agent in processing the transaction, agrees to abide by the same rules. Since the relationship is based on contract, the rights, responsibilities, and liabilities for all the parties are established. Again, this arrangement reduces the occurrence of disputes since the losses in such cases are allocated according to the terms of the agreement one signs to become part of the system.

To the extent that disputes do arise within the context of these payment systems, the contract defines the forum state and establishes the applicable law. The extent to which these contractual provisions may be enforceable is an important consideration in Internet commerce, but not a question unique to the banking and payment systems area. Consequently, it is not one that is resolved within the context of this discussion. However, to the extent that such forum selection and choice of law provisions may be enforceable in general as between sophisticated companies engaging in a significant amount of Internet commerce, the participants in the banking and payment systems world fit this model perhaps better than most industries.

While the principles governing these systems seem similar to the government-based systems described earlier, the term “private” must be carefully understood in this connection. These companies are private in the sense that they are owned by investors, and are not government agencies like the Federal Reserve Bank, or quasi-governmental constructs, like the Bank of England. These private companies are able to process and settle an enormous volume of transactions within and among themselves, as well as between themselves and other banking institutions. However, at some point transactions within these private networks intersect (and indeed, sometimes must intersect) with the governmental payments system. This case may arise because some party in the transaction chooses to involve the governmental system. Or it may be that monetary transactions involving a particular jurisdiction can only be processed through a governmental system (all banks in State X have been nationalized.) Or, in an extreme case, a central bank may step into the transaction to guarantee payment as a “lender of last resort” or


“guarantor of ultimate settlement” to maintain system stability.

Thus, the private system and the government system are linked and, if the combination is viewed as whole, a kind of quasi-public/quasi-private operation is presented. Around the globe, most systems present some form of mixture in practice, with the exact admixture being a product of a variety of local historical and cultural factors. In addition, the dual nature of the overall structure is a source of continuing internal tension that is often healthy and often not.

Overview of Alternative Payment Systems What is Money?

A brief discussion of the nature of money is helpful in understanding the issues presented by alternative payment systems. Several concepts are worthy of note: (1) Taken to its most abstract level, “money” is simply a subpart of a general belief system, a piece of “consensual reality.” This concept is particularly important since alternative payment systems, at their core, are founded on the principle that the “e-money” they create and process is only what the participants in that system agree that it shall be. While the same is true of traditional systems, the underlying belief which support traditional systems are so well accepted that their foundation in belief is no longer noted, much less questioned. (2) Money was created to serve three functions: a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. Electronic money fulfills these three functions. (3) One should bear in mind a distinction between (a) the evidence of money as an object and (b) the delivery system for the money. For example, the coin, the bill, and the digital file are forms of evidence of the money. The human hand, the electronic wallet, the ATM machine, the credit or debit card and all the associated infrastructure are delivery systems for the evidence of the money and


thereby enable the functions of the money to be fulfilled. (4) The “e-money” in the alternative systems is not “legal tender,” as the concept underlying that term is employed generally in the public finance laws of most jurisdictions. The e-money becomes “legal tender” only at the point that it becomes denominated in the form of the money that is employed within the traditional payment system. In this sense, except for the fact that it is in electronic form, “e-money” is for all practical purposes not distinguishable from the “script” or “tokens” used elsewhere in the pre-electronic world. At Disneyland, one could purchase a book of tickets granting admission to the rides and to exchange for other goods (e.g., food) or services. The paper script with Mickey Mouse’s picture that can be used to buy cotton candy worked only because Disney agreed to accept it as form of payment. Indeed, the term “tokens” is sometimes used to refer to certain forms of e-money. The first form of evidence of money was some physical object, a commodity such as cooper, silver, gold, or sea shells. The form of evidence evolved to paper, which has the major advantage of being a more efficient way of performing its three functions. The form of evidence has now evolved by the further reduction in its physicality. Money has become notational money, that is, money whose existence is evidenced by notations in the records of various parties, principally financial institutions. The advent of the computer age pushed the evolution further by converting the pen and ink notations in ledgers to the less tangible bits and bytes in electronic storage media. In all cases, however, regardless of whether the evidence is in the form of basic physical objects or in the form of electronic accounting entries, the money is what it is agreed to be.

A checking account is a good illustration of several aspects of the points made above.11

In most countries there is a developed system of law that sets forth many of the rights and obligations of both the check drawer and payee. For example, in the U.S., both federal and state laws serve this function – Federal Reserve Board Regulation CC and Uniform Commercial Code Articles 3 and 4. This body of law includes the concept of suspension of the underlying obligation of the drawer to the payee, pending the payment of the check. Indeed, there is a substantial body of law in the United States and in other countries governing the rights and obligations of parties to virtually all types of payments transactions. 16

The balance in the checking account is notational money. It exists only in those records kept by the financial institution and by the owner of the account, which hopefully are in agreement as to the amount. Legally, a check is not itself money. It is an order to the financial institution on which it is drawn authorizing the transfer of notational money from the checking account to the payee. The payee does not receive actual money until the financial institution delivers the funds to the payee or transfers that amount into the payee’s account. Nevertheless, psychologically, the payee and various transferees of the payee consider themselves to be paid and to have received value simply by the issuance of the check. Hence, in this case, the notational money becomes a kind of script for a brief period and then is converted into legal tender (if the check is cashed) or back into notational money (if the check is deposited).

One effect of the computer age is that this process can be greatly accelerated and done entirely electronically. Checks and other items that once took weeks to settle now routinely settle in days and can, if handled electronically, settle within seconds.12 Notational money can be made vastly more efficient by being directly transferred, without requiring written instructions. Once the requirement for a writing is eliminated, the “script” or “token” can take on an infinite variety of forms. All that is required is general agreement as to form and an efficient system for trading the tokens from one party to another.

Most new electronic payment systems involve prepaid stored-value cards (card-based systems) and on-line payments made on the Internet (software-based systems). These new money systems have not yet gained wide acceptance in the United States. They are used much more widely in Europe and Asia. While a variety of factors appear to be relevant in causing this difference in levels of acceptance, two seem most relevant from the jurisdictional perspective: differences in the quality and cost of means of communicating information and differences in the structure of financial services providers. These are points that are further developed below.


To gauge the speed at which modern payment systems transfer value, consider this illustration: merchants now accept debit cards as forms of payment. Most systems are “real time” so when you present your card for payment, the balance is instantly transferred from your account at the time of authorization to the benefit of the merchant. Consumers who relied on the concept of “float” where a check written to a merchant would not hit the account for 17

At the margins are various forms of private e-money such as airline miles, reward programs, IBM dollars and other similar “tokens.” While conceptually very interesting and perhaps quite important for the longer-term future, they do not present unique issues that must be dealt with in this discussion. Another similar private money system now in development stems from the growth of online bartering. Conceptually, the exchange ratio in any given trade is an ad hoc currency, and the general structure of such currency, combined with the technology that operates the online bartering, is a currency system. While this has always been true in the paper-based world, the inefficiencies of that method make the point little more than an academic observation. However, the processing power of modern communications technology could make this development of significant future importance. Nevertheless, it is beyond the scope of this work.

Any description of alternative payments methods might mention some of the following items: anonymity of cash purse-to-purse transfers; tax implications; privacy concerns; law enforcement issues, such as tax avoidance; money laundering; setting interoperability standards; multiple currencies; multiple function cards (e.g., privacy concerns when personal and medical data are also stored on smart cards); closed vs. open systems: and debit vs. credit cards. However, it is not exactly clear what the jurisdictional implications are in the Internet context, from the point of view of the customer, the financial institutions, the networks and the governments and regulators, beyond the basic issue of what authorities have prescriptive jurisdiction and why they have it.

Further, in the literature on banking and payment systems and cyberspace, frequent mention is made of many of the following substantive issues. Again, the question is whether any of them have jurisdictional implications, beyond the basic question of what authority(ies) have prescriptive jurisdiction and why they have it. These substantive issues include access to the payments system (can non-banks issue electronic money?); finality of payment, security and privacy; enforceability of contractual obligations; fraud; consumer protection generally;

days, allowing that individual to deposit sufficient funds within the intervening time, must now adapt their cash flow 18

regulatory issues, such as whether the issuance of electronic money is a permissible banking activity for specific types of institutions; applicability of state money transmitter and travelers' check statutes; whether e-money is a negotiable instrument; and who will regulate e-money issuers for credit worthiness and solvency.

The ultimate substantive question may be who controls global e-money and, in the end, money itself: the governments and central banks or the issuers? Is the issuance of money a function only of governments? While this is clearly a political and policy issue, there is no

legal jurisdictional component to the ultimate policy question in the area.

Perhaps some of the points just listed above can best be illustrated by two hypotheticals:


In January 1999 an American consumer (AC), who is domiciled in New York State and whose business is in New York State, executes a two-year contract with an English marketing firm (EM) to buy monthly updates to a large mailing address database previously licensed by AC from the same marketing firm. EM’s headquarters are in London, but the server on which the database and the updates are stored is located in Brussels. EM’s computer staff in Brussels transmits the updates directly via the Internet to AC’s server, which is located in Massachusetts.

AC makes payment for the updates using e-money issued by the First Internet Bank of Canada (FIBC) which operates a software-based alternative payments system. FIBC is used because EM has a cyber-account with FIBC in view of EM’s on-going operations in Canada. AC does not have an account with FIBC, but exchanges e-money issued by The Cayman Islands Web Bank (CIWB), where AC has a cyber-account. AC pays for the e-money issued by CIWB by a standard wire transfer from AC’s usual bank, the Bank of New York (BONY).

1. After three months AC discovers what it believes to be significant inaccuracies in the
management to account for these near instantaneous transfers of value. 19

updates and wishes to take action to recover payments previously made, to require correction of data previously supplied, and to obtain redress for as yet unspecified consequential damages caused by its reliance on the inaccuracies in the updates, as well as such fees and costs and the court may deem just.

2. After two more months AC discovers a highly damaging virus in its system which it alleges was transmitted due to the negligence of EM’s computer staff in Brussels. (A suspicious reader might conclude that EM’s pattern of shipping product from one country and receiving payment in another might not be entirely unrelated to the likelihood that the Inland Revenue would be discommoded thereby in any audit of EM. An equally alert reader might harbor a similar suspicion as to AC’s behavior in relation to the New York Department of Taxation, especially in view of the somewhat circuitous route by which payment arrived in Canada. But, such suspicions may be put aside.)

* * *

AC brings an action against EM in an English court. AC brings an action against EM in a New York court. What result in each case?


In January 1899 an American consumer (AC), who is domiciled in New York State and whose business is in New York State, executes a two-year contract with an English marketing firm (EM) to buy monthly updates to a large compilation of mailing addresses previously licensed by AC from the same marketing firm. EM’s headquarters are in London, but the building in which the compilation and the updates are stored is located in Brussels. EM’s clerical staff in Brussels send the updates by ship mail directly to AC’s advertisement mailing center, which is located in Massachusetts.

AC makes payment for the updates using a draft issued by the First International Bank of


Canada (FIBC). FIBC is used because EM has an account with FBIC in view of EM’s on-going operations in Canada. AC does not have an account with FIBC, but makes payment to FIBC by means of a draft issued by The Cayman Islands World Bank (CIWB), where AC has an account. AC funds the draft issued by CIWB by a draft issued by AC’s usual bank, the Bank of New York (BONY).

1. After three months AC discovers what it believes to be significant inaccuracies in the updates and wishes to take action to recover payments previously made, to require correction of data previously supplied, and to obtain redress for as yet unspecified consequential damages caused by its reliance on the inaccuracies in the updates, as well as such fees and costs and the court may deem just.

2. After two more months AC discovers a series of gross errors in the updates which it asserts have corrupted the previously licensed compilation passim and which it alleges were transmitted due to the negligence of EM’s clerical staff in Brussels.

* * *


It would appear that the answers to the 1899 Hypothetical A2 would not be different in any substantial respect from the answers given to the 1999 Hypothetical A1 as a banking and payments system matter. Indeed, it would appear that the very speed with which the funds can now be spun through jurisdictions other than those of the parties to the main contract emphasizes their lack of jurisdictional significance. There may be a jurisdictional issue as between Belgium and Massachusetts in the “virus” cases from Hypothetical A1 because differences may exist as to the weight given to where the harmful action was initiated and where the harm resulted. However, that issue would not be a banking/payments system issue. Further, banks generally are able to locate their back-office computer operations in states or countries other than where they are licensed to do business, so long as the back-office is not open


to the public for the engaging of banking business. This legal rationale seems applicable to the Internet servers. Overview of Banking International Banking Generally

Some banking institutions are so large that they conduct international business transactions and have developed operations in several countries to allow seamless customer service. Alternatively, correspondent relationships allow a bank in one country to conduct transactions on behalf of a bank in another country, which again provides the customer with a straightforward transaction.

Historically, most of the branch banks were in fact full-fledged banks organized and operated under the laws of the host sovereign. Under the normal corporate entity model, a multi-national corporation seeking to do business in another country may establish an office there. But because the banking business is so tightly regulated by most countries, a foreign bank could not just open an office in the host country. Instead, it would have to charter an entirely new bank within that country. Rather than a true corporate subsidiary, the new bank would have to operate in accordance with the laws and regulations pertinent to any bank chartered in the host country. Separate books and records for that branch organization had to be maintained, examinations by the regulators of the host country had to be allowed, and relationships between the parent bank and its subsidiary had to follow strict guidelines. Most countries even required a separate board of directors for these branch banks, some even mandating that a certain percentage be citizens of the host country.

Under either of the above models, the bank in question establishes a physical presence in the country in which it does business, by developing its own branch or working with an established institution as its correspondent. Jurisdiction issues therefore are easily resolved. Once the physical presence is established, the bank becomes subject to the regulatory, adjudicative, and prescriptive jurisdiction of the host state, province, or country.


European Union Banking Regulation

A more recent development in the process of cross-jurisdictional banking has been the emergence of treaties and joint agreements allowing banks and their regulators to reach across borders to conduct banking business without the need to necessarily establish an independent, autonomous branch. In the US, the advent of interstate banking has broken down many of those historic barriers. The emergence of the European Union has also provided a model for the agreed rules that allow these cross-jurisdictional banking operations.

The different structures in the banking and financial services industry in the member states of the EU, together with their different regulatory regimes, has created a substantial impairment to the cross-border provision of services by financial institutions of one member state in other member states. The Second Banking Co-ordination Directive no. 89/646/EEC of 15 December 1989 is intended to remove such barriers to entry by providing a "passport" to banking activities. Subject to certain requirements, if a credit institution is authorized to carry on banking activities in its home state, then such institution should be allowed to carry on the same activities throughout the EU. The Directive is based on the idea of a single banking license, valid in all EU member states. Credit institutions wishing to establish a branch or to provide services in a member state other than their home state will no longer be required to obtain a separate authorization form the host state. All EU member states are supposed to have implemented the Directive by 1 January 1993.

Directive 97/5/EC of the European Parliament and Council, dated January 27, 1997, regulated the cross-border transfers of funds among Member States of the European Union. Member States were required to implement these regulations by adopting them into their respective national law.

In view of the significant increase in the amount and value of cross-border payments made through bank transfers, the Directive, and the corresponding new laws in each Member State, aimed to create a legal framework so that both individuals and businesses can carry out


their transfers inside the European Union quickly, economically, and in a reliable manner. The provisions of the Directive are only applicable to transfers made in Euros or any other currency of the Member States of the EU, but they do not apply to transfers in other currencies (such as US Dollars, Japanese Yens or Swiss Francs).

The Directive only applies to transfers for maximum amounts of 50,000 Euros, which equals roughly US$52,000. This limitation carries forward the Directive’s objective of facilitating cross-border transfers particularly to individuals and small and medium enterprises. Due to its consumer protection basis, the provisions of the Directive will not be applicable where the transfer has been initiated by a credit entity, financial entity, or any other entity that carries out cross-border transfers within the frame of its business.

The Directive further applies only to cross-border transfers among Member States of the EU and carried out inside the EU itself, i.e., all those transaction initiated by an applicant through an entity of a Member State and aimed at putting a certain amount of money at the disposal of a beneficiary with an entity located in another Member State. Consequently, transfers made inside the territory on the same Member State are not subject to the Directive.

The Directive sets out certain minimum requirements on information that the entities must deliver to their actual and potential customers as regards the conditions of the described transactions. Before carrying out or receiving a cross-border transfer, the entity must have notified the client of the period of time until the funds are credited (or debited, as the case may be) in the beneficiary’s account, the calculation methods for all costs and commissions payable by the customer, the value date applied by the entity, means available to the customer to file claims, and the exchange rates used. Such information must be presented in a manner that is easily comprehensible to the client.

According to the Directive, after making or receiving a cross-border transfer, the entity shall furnished detailed information on the transaction which must include, at least, a reference that allows the customer to identify the transfer, the initial sum, the amount of costs and expenses


at the customer’s charge, the value date applied and, if necessary, the exchange rate used. Unlike the information described in the previous paragraph, the customer may waive receiving such information, although due to its importance such waiver should occur rarely in practice.

The Directive requires the entity to carry out the cross-border transfer within the time period agreed with the applicant. If there is no express agreement, the applicant’s entity must carry out the transfer such that the funds are credited to the account of the beneficiary’s entity on the fifth banking day following the date of acceptance of the transfer order. If this term is not complied with, then the applicant’s entity must indemnify the beneficiary by paying an interest on the delay. If the delay is attributable to an intermediary entity, then this entity will have to indemnify the applicant’s entity. In a similar manner, the beneficiary’s entity must put the funds at the disposal of the beneficiary within the agreed period of time or, absent an agreement, at the end of the banking day which follows the date on which the funds have been credited to the account of the beneficiary’s entity. Non-compliance with this term also originates an indemnification obligation of the beneficiary’s entity.

In principle, and unless otherwise instructed by the applicant, the costs related with the cross-border transfer are to be borne by the applicant. Therefore, all intervening entities are obliged to execute the transfer for its total amount. Where the applicant’s entity has made an unauthorized deduction on the amount of the transfer, such entity must, at its cost, transfer to the beneficiary the amount deducted or pay such sum to the applicant. Similar obligations are established in the event that the deduction has been made by an intermediary entity or by the beneficiary’s entity.

The Directive and its corresponding implementing Acts intend to provide consumers with mechanisms to protect themselves from the mistakes and abuses that the entities which intervene in cross-border transfers of funds sometimes commit. Such a framework must be worked out for cross-border transfers over the Internet if electronic commerce between and among foreign


states is to flow with certainty and reliability. World Trade Organization Agreement on Financial Services

This agreement was completed in December of 1997 and sets out binding multilateral rules on foreign establishment and investment in the banking, securities and insurance sectors. It has not yet come into force. [Detail to come] Central Banking

[to be added] Jurisdiction Issues for Banking/Payment Systems General

Historically, as is developed more fully elsewhere in the Project Report, jurisdiction has grounded in geography. In very general terms, for court to have jurisdiction over the person or the thing, that person or thing needed, in some sense, to be present in the forum. As commerce expanded, so did the definition of “present,” by virtue of concepts such as “doing business” and “deemed consent” and by virtue of “long-arm” statutes. US Experience A history of US banking could be written around the central theme of the forces that tried to hold back, and to expand, the permissible geographic range over which financial institutions in the US could offer their products and services. Historically, jurisdictional questions have not presented difficult issues for depository institutions in the United States. Banking by US depository institutions was very local. As late as 1921, the United States had 29,788 banks, nearly all without branches. Most payments were related to very local commercial activities. In fact, as late as the 1990’s, some states required that a bank could not operate outside of its home county. Conversely, no other bank would be granted a charter to do business in that county. Most of these restrictions have been swept away, but they provide some insight into the depth of


the local nature and character of traditional depository institution practices.

The essential reasons for this local structure that pervaded in the early part of this century involved the limitations of the conveyance of both persons and information. For most of the population, physical travel for a distance of more than 15 miles in a day was not possible. Moreover, the information necessary to conduct banking services needed to be maintained within a single office. Efficient means were not available to distribute that information to a branch network: the signature cards, deposit and loan balances, policy changes, and all the other data necessary to operate a financial institution. Telegrams were useful to covey confirmations and other brief exchanges, but they could not transmit large amounts of data or graphical data such as signature cards, and only with great difficulty could they convey coded data to maintain confidentiality. However simple from the jurisdictional point of view, this tightly bound geographical structure was inherently unsound from the standpoint of structural stability and safety. Adverse local economic developments frequently caused local bank failures. For example, during the 1920’s, which were generally quite prosperous times in the US, the country experienced an average failure rate of 550 banks per year. An earlier technological revolution – the automobile – was a principal cause of a change in this structure whereby the number of branches increased and the number of main offices decreased. This process was sharply accelerated by the advent of the telephone and by failures during the Great Depression.13 The result was a period during which traditional banking relied principally on presence of physical branches to provide services and those branches provided service to ever expanding geographic areas. The service area expanded as evolving technology allowed pertinent information to be exchanged across ever-greater distances.

The course of this development is important to understanding the jurisdictional issues that are presented in this area of law. Since placing a physical branch in a jurisdiction resulted in the banks’ being subject to that jurisdiction’s laws, the question has rarely been addressed. Most

In the US, during the three-year period from the beginning of 1930 through the end of 1932, some 9,000 banks failed – nearly one-third of all banks at the beginning of the period.


cases that have arisen involving jurisdictional issues pertinent to banking and payment systems have involved letters of credit. Essentially, these are commitments to pay a certain amount to the named beneficiary of the letter upon the performance of some condition precedent. These documents facilitated the growth of commerce across jurisdictional boundaries as the bank in essence guaranteed payment of the underlying obligation. Sellers could then deal with unknown buyers but have confidence that the payment would be made upon their delivery of the goods according to the terms of their agreement, which provisions were incorporated into the letter of credit.

As issues arose in this limited area, traditional jurisdictional principles were applied. Did the bank in question have sufficient contacts with the forum state (usually where the beneficiary of the letter of credit resided) to allow that court to exert adjudicative or prescriptive jurisdiction over that bank? The answers were not unique to the banking and payment systems industries, and therefore are not further resolved in this discussion.

Another element strictly limited the opportunity for jurisdictional disputes arising in the context of US banking and payment systems. Almost all of the large financial institutions in the US are chartered under federal law. US law requires that any lawsuit brought against a federally chartered bank must be brought in federal court. 12 U.S.C. §632. Any suit brought in a local court would be removed to the appropriate US District Court. As to the proper forum for such a suit, the District Courts have rules that resolve such a matter, again based on general jurisdiction principles.

As technology and capabilities developed, these operating restrictions that limited financial institutions to a particular area were overcome through several means, such as the development of interstate banking compacts, use of holding companies, and establishment of non-banking subsidiaries. The developments all resulted in the financial institution being "present" in that forum for the purpose of jurisdictional questions. Today, by means of branches, service corporations, second tier service corporations, operating subsidiaries, holding company affiliates, agency offices, all kinds of different "facilities," joint ventures, limited


partnerships, and the use of telephones, faxes, mass mailings, and (last but certainly not least for purposes of this discussion) the Internet, financial service firms can now be "present" anywhere they want to be. Further, these techniques that traditional depository institutions have needed to employ to operate outside of the geographic boundaries established by the banking regulators have not even been necessary for the mortgage bankers, consumer finance companies, and securities firms.

However powerful, the Internet is simply an extension of this general historical process in which financial services firms have expanded their ability to provide their products and services to virtually anywhere in the world. The net result of these historical developments is that, even without the advent of the Internet and e-commerce, US depository institutions currently have the realistic ability, if they choose to exercise it, to establish a physical presence in any part of the country sufficient to subject them to local jurisdiction under traditional forms of jurisdictional analysis. Thus, from this perspective, the advent of the Internet is simply the latest (although perhaps the most powerful) in a long series of institutional and technological changes that have enabled depository institutions to be “present” for actual or potential jurisdictional purposes.

Logically, this leads to the conclusion that a financial institution is subject, actually or potentially, to jurisdiction everywhere. In effect, it says that jurisdiction can be derived from

the frequency with which the financial institution or any of its customers interact. One effect of the Internet is to vastly multiply the number of places where that interaction may take place. Another effect is to enable financial institutions to operate without a physical presence in any jurisdiction in which its services are received. The growing number of Internet banks have no offices at all except a single operations center, which can be located anywhere. Another effect is that the location of a financial institution over the Internet at any given time is random. The financial institution’s presence is a function of the operation of routers on the Internet.

This line of reasoning suggests the conclusion that, while traditional modes of jurisdictional analysis may possibly still be functional for adjudicative purposes, it is not functional for prescriptive purposes. This is dealt with in greater detail below.


Non- US Experience

[To be added] Concept of Personal Jurisdiction

The delivery of financial services over the Internet is breaking down the concept of necessarily having a physical presence in an area to provide services there. Services are being provided across jurisdictional lines. The Internet is allowing expansion of financial services outside of former physical limitations. Again, however, the issues presented are not unique to financial services. Sufficient contacts, if that continues to be the standard, will be no different for a financial institution than they would be for any other company conducting its business within the context of the Internet. Concept of (Prescriptive) Regulatory Jurisdiction When can another country’s regulatory authority exercise review, examination, and enforcement powers over a financial institution doing business over the Internet with its country’s citizen’s? This is the crux of the question for this project within the banking and payment systems area.

As discussed earlier, government has a strong need to oversee and regulate the financial services provided to its citizens. Financial institution regulation in general is broad and pervasive. Governments basically have the authority to direct any of the institution’s activities that might affect its “safety and soundness,” a common industry standard that really places no practical limits on the scope and nature of the government’s potential reach. All of an institution’s activities on any level have some affect on its safety and soundness, or the activity would not be conducted. As a practical matter, government regulation is relaxed when the financial institution is performing well and clamps down strongly as soon as the government learns of any potential problems that could seriously affect the institution’s viability.

Governments in general must fulfill this oversight role to instill the public with


confidence in the system. Too many failures have devastated too many economies over the course of history to consider that the public would soon be willing to conduct business within the banking and payment system without knowing that the ultimate guarantor is the government. The trade-off is then established between the government guaranteeing the system and the government’s authority to intervene and regulate the system.

With such an important mission on the part of the government to guarantee the viability of the banking and payment system, the problem for a financial institution that wishes to operate across multiple jurisdictions becomes clear. Governments by their nature are diverse, reflecting the nature and character of the people they govern. Consequently, their expectations and opinions about the proper course of action to ensure the safety and soundness of any financial institution within their regulatory control will differ. A financial institution faced with trying to meet these diverse standards would either have to devote immense resources to complying with these standards or limit its operations to one set of government standards.

And that is where the crux of the issue lies for the jurisdictional aspects of the banking and payment systems and the Internet. The Internet provides the means for any financial institution to provide financial services anywhere in the world. To that extent, it becomes the great leveler. A small financial institution trying to expand its market or service area would traditionally be forced to proceed piece-meal as it could afford to establish physical branches throughout its target area. Now, through the Internet, that small financial institution is just as capable of providing its products and services anywhere in the world as its much larger brethren.

But the large, multi-national financial institutions have already established operations in many countries and have the resources to devote to complying with the regulatory oversight of these various governments. The small institution never could or would match that capability. Moreover, the small financial institution would in many cases not even know to address the issue because it would be unaware of the particular requirements of the various jurisdictions that the Internet now allows it to reach.


Unless we can resolve the issue of regulatory jurisdiction over financial institution operations, the main advantage provided by the Internet in the area of banking and payment systems will be negated by the disadvantage of having to meet the myriad of laws and regulations that apply to such activities all over the world. Governments must come to agreement on reciprocal regulatory oversight and cooperative examinations, much as state regulators in the US have done with the advent of interstate branching. Otherwise, the promise of the Internet as a vehicle for commerce by small and medium sized financial institutions will never be realized.

It is useful to consider how the applicable legal structure has resolved certain jurisdiction issues involved in transactions analogous to Internet banking transactions, such as banking transactions effected by telephone or through the mail. Traditionally, in the United States, the individual state banking departments have taken the view that the following transactions do not result in an out-of-state bank engaging in the banking business in a state where the customer is located: (i) the customer mailing funds to a bank located outside of the state; (ii) the customer telephoning the out-of-state bank with payment instructions; or (iii) the customer using an ATM to withdraw money or transfer funds from an account located at an out-of state bank. The rationale for this view is that the actual banking activities, such as the posting of accounts, the payment of checks, the issuance of payment orders, etc., all take place outside of the state.

It is also useful to distinguish between the application of the substantive laws governing the rights and obligations of parties to the transaction in question and bank chartering laws. Generally, in the United States, most states take the view that (absent some sort of preemption doctrine) its substantive laws governing the transaction in question apply to transactions involving any state resident. So, even if an out-of-state bank is not required to be licensed in a particular state in order to provide banking services to customers located in that state, the out-of-state bank may still be subject to the law of the state in which the consumer is located that details the consumer’s rights and obligations with respect to the transaction in question. This policy on the application of these substantive laws to out-of-state banks is also different than the “safety and soundness” concept of jurisdiction discussed above. An Approach to Solutions



In developing an approach to solutions to jurisdictional issues in cyberspace, it may be helpful to see that the technological developments underlying the e-commerce revolution are creating significant commonalities (a) among financial and non-financial goods and services and (b) among traditionally delivered goods and services and electronically delivered goods and services. It is also helpful to see that the same technological developments are causing us to become aware of the degree to which some of the same commonalities have long existed in the pre-Internet world. Evidence as Digital Files As noted earlier, most nation states have traditionally distinguished among different types of financial services based on: (a) the legal character of the entity rendering the service (is it chartered as a bank, a savings bank, or a credit union?); (b) what is the legal classification of the service or product rendered (is it a loan, a deposit, a security or a contract of insurance?). It was noted that the barriers within this system are breaking down generally if only for the reason that these financial products and services have the commonality that they are all evidenced by information in the form of digital files. Further, it was noted that traditional legal barriers to mixing “banking and commerce” are weakening generally for the same reason. It is highly efficient for a single organization to maintain large databases of customer information and to offer a wide variety of products and to market and cross-market them.

However, there are additional commonalities and this fact has significant effects for jurisdictional purposes and for the Jurisdiction Project. These additional commonalities can be articulated as follows: the commonality that all products and services have the separate dimensions of legal formation and real world fulfillment; the commonality that the formation process occurs “online” and the fulfillment process occurs “offline;” the commonality that products and services are applications as well as files; and the commonality of substantive and transactional interdependence. These are discussed under separated headings below. Intangible Formation and Real World Fulfillment


Lawyers are well familiar with the idea that one does not literally buy Blackacre. One acquires by contact a legal right (labeled a fee) with respect to Blackacre (legal formation) and, separately, one then exclusively occupies Blackacre (legal fulfillment). The formation of the loan agreement is separate from the receipt of the loan proceeds. One buys the jacket over the telephone but one’s order is fulfilled by mail. The entire formation process is an exchange of intangibles and is thus largely a “virtual” process, in modern language. However, this has always been so. The “stuff” in the formation process has always been rights and obligations -not anything physical. The Internet has added nothing new. On-Line Formation and Offline Fulfillment The formation process can be thought of as occurring “online” and the fulfillment process as occurring “offline.” The musty old solicitor's office in which the purchase money mortgage

for Blackacre is signed is thus conceptually no different from the latest Internet real estate website. They are both media. A stock purchase under the old Buttonwood Tree and the purchase of an interest in a mutual fund over the Internet are not essentially different from this standpoint. Even where the product or service is fulfilled digitally, as in the case of a software or music download, telemedicine, legal advice, architectural drawings, etc., formation and fulfillment are separate processes. Thus, it is easy to see that all transactions, regardless of

whether they are for financial services and products or for any commercial products or services, and regardless of whether they are traditionally or electronically delivered, are essentially a combination of online and offline events. Linkage to Applications Financial and non-financial products and services also have in common the multiple ways in which they are, and are linked to, applications. What is an application? For these purposes, it is simply an instruction (or set of instructions) applied to data. A simple illustration is a check. A check is an application in which: Payor = Name Field; Instruction (PAY); to Payee = Name Field; Amount = Number Field); on or after Date Field by order of Drawer = Name Field. A draft is a yet simpler example. From the programming standpoint a draft is a check with one less name field. An order to buy or sell securities, or to deposit money into an account, or to fund or make a payment on a loan has exactly the same pattern.


Further evidence of this point is the fact that products and services are now being sought out, agreed to, and delivered by means of Java applets, Active X controls and similar software entities (electronic agents, shopping “bots,” etc.). The technology is rapidly developing whereby the formation process can be conducted by means of electronic agents or bots14. Further, the items of evidence of the intangible rights and obligations exchanged in the transaction (deeds, mortgage contracts, notices) are commonly a digitized file. Further, the digitized evidence of the digital transaction is commonly stored in electronic data bases which, depending on the transaction, may or may not have legal significance of itself (a recording, for example). Further, the usefulness of these digitized files is inseparable from the applications that create, transmit, store, retrieve, and otherwise manipulate them. Thus, at all levels -- solicitation, negotiation, formation, evidence, infrastructure and fulfillment, the transactions -- financial and non-financial -- are essentially digital and bound up with applications. Finally, as file formats and applications become standardized and interoperable this commonality will only become more pervasive.

More importantly, the same thing is true of physical goods. The computer does not know whether the BUY instruction relates to a security or a tanker-load of oil. The computer does not know whether subject of the transaction is regulated by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission because it is a “commodity,” or by the Securities and Exchange Commission because it is a share of General Electric, or by the Federal Trade Commission because it is a jacket, or by the Food and Drug Administration because it is a drug. On the programming level there is no difference between financial services of every kind and other commercial products and services of every kind. To put the matter in U.S. banking law terms, an analysis on the programming level indicates the core artificiality of the distinctions in the Glass-Steagall Act and suggests the extent of the difficulty in maintaining them. They essentially do not conform to the underlying reality.

A further example is the breakdown of the traditional securities trading mechanisms as a

The Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA) in the US would supply the legal framework for contracts formed by such electronic agents.


result of the operation of these commonalities. Traditional stock exchanges and securities trading mechanisms are experiencing a structure-altering level of competition from electronic communication networks (ECN’s) and other alternative trading systems (ATS). In addition, traditional brokerage firms are being challenged fundamentally by low-cost online brokers. Finally, it is clear that there is no fundamental difference on the programming level between bank payment systems and securities settlement systems. Substantive and Transactional Interdependence It is important to understand that all products and services, regardless of whether are financial or not, have in common that their successful formation and fulfillment depend on the simultaneous application of multiple legal disciplines. Any lawyer who has put together a corporate merger understands that the corporate aspects, the tax aspects, the financing aspects are all pieces of a single whole -- if you can’t determine the taxation, you can’t determine the price; if you can’t determine the price, you can’t draft the offering materials. And the transaction will never occur. Equally, the transaction will never occur if you can’t value the assets, and you can’t value the assets unless you can determine the nature of the rights and obligations that actually are the assets, and you can’t do that unless you know which laws apply. Hence, the fact that you can get an agreement with respect, say, to the banking or finance aspect of the matter, but you don’t have agreement with respect to all the other pieces of the puzzle means that you fundamentally will not have the formation or the fulfillment of the product or service. In essence, the service or product transaction won’t happen unless all the necessary issue variables are resolvable within a tolerable degree of uncertainty (that is, you can price for the uncertainty) Implications for the Jurisdiction Project and Solutions Sector -By-Sector Approach The foregoing analysis has an important implication for suggestions that one way to proceed to deal with harmonization of jurisdictional issues through international agreements is to use a sector-by-sector approach. The very unity of the transactions suggests that the utility of this sector-by-sector approach is limited. Common Jurisdictional Results

The foregoing also has important implications for the activities of the various working groups of the ABA Jurisdiction Project. For initial analytical purposes and division of labor purposes, it was, of course, necessary to break the work into conventional classifications such as taxation, sale of goods, privacy, etc. However, it is important to understand that each of these are disparate elements of unitary commercial endeavors. It is also important to understand that items which appear to be separate are really the same; as noted above, on the functional level the payments system and the securities settlement system are essentially the same thing. There is no apparent reason why there should be different jurisdiction results in the two cases. Country of Origin vs. Country of Destination The foregoing analysis regarding commonalities also has important implications for the country of origin/country of destination debate. The ancient debate over country of origin control (lex originis) versus country of destination control (lex protectionis) has emerged as one of the most fundamental issues affecting all aspects of commerce, nationally and internationally, regardless of whether that commerce is electronic or not. (The debate can be described as national for the reason that pre-emption issues within federal states and within supra-national entities like the European Union are essentially issues of origin country/destination country control.) This debate can be seen in taxation, sale of goods and services, banking and payment systems, environmental law, genetically modified organisms, and every aspect of world trade. This debate is fundamentally the issue of prescriptive jurisdiction described above.

This matter is commonly presented in either/or terms. The business community, particularly larger businesses, is generally presented as wanting country of origin control, and the consumer groups and environmental and other local activists are generally presented as wanting country of destination control. However, the matter is a bit more complex than that. With respect to privacy, the EU wants country of origin control and the US wants country of destination control. On the other hand, with respect to genetically modified organisms (to take a somewhat unusual example), the EU wants country of destination control and the US wishes the reverse. As a general proposition, across a very wide spectrum of goods and services, the matter seems to come down to a question of whose ox is being gored.


Within the EU there is disagreement. The draft EU Directive on Electronic Commerce would use a country-of-origin approach, but the EU’s recently proposed amendments to the Brussels and Lugano conventions would employ a country-of-destination approach -- a matter that has lead to heated controversy in the EU.

In addition, the perception that country of origin control is favored mainly by the larger units within the business community is not correct. An inherent advantage of the Internet is the ability to broaden the base to which it is economically feasible to offer services. A small financial institution can, for example, offer the same access and convenience to a home banking customer as can any mega-bank. Requiring such a financial institution to monitor and follow the regulatory requirements of an international panoply of jurisdictions negates that economic benefit. The promise of the Internet is dashed in the complexities.

If it is the case that all of the products and services that the Jurisdiction Project covers share, in very large measure, the multiple commonalities described above, it is not a sensible solution to have substantially different jurisdictional rules for financial services and other services, or for different legal aspects of the same transaction. A world in which the incidents of tax jurisdiction are substantially different from the incidents of consumer protection, which are different from the incidents of contract formation, etc., is a world in which the transactional costs will have a substantially negative effect on the volume and pricing of the commerce.

The answer to the country of origin/country of destination debate is, in virtually all cases, both, not either/or. In this sense, the banking and payment system area is an excellent example. Speaking solely from the vantage point of the U.S., it is inconceivable that the United States would cede to other nation states elements of prescriptive and enforcement jurisdiction which it regarded as essential to its sovereignty. The existence of the U.S. International Banking Act administered by the Federal Reserve Board is evidence of that fact (see 12 CFR Ch. 40). At the same time, it is inconceivable that the rest of the world (i.e., the destination countries) would permit U.S. financial institutions to act within their borders solely in accordance with U.S. law. The same conclusion can be drawn with respect to virtually every area of law.


Nevertheless, in the financial institution area, it is common for “safety and soundness” regulation (prudential supervision” in the continental usage) to be conducted on a country-of-origin basis (by the chartering jurisdiction) and for “compliance” regulation to be conducted using a country-of-destination approach (where the financial services were received).

The European Union has struggled with these issues for decades and has developed a general approach (described above) that could be useful in approaching these issues not only for the banking and payments systems area, but more generally. It seems to follow from the global nature of the Internet that the single most likely approach toward a solution over the long haul is by means of international agreements. In the past, development of global agreements has been important to, and has made significant contributions to, the development of world commerce and a peaceful world order. However, something different has now occurred. Global agreements are no longer simply important. They are of the essence. The Internet has caused the mechanism of international agreements to no longer just be “nice,” but to be indispensable.15 Trusted Systems The qualification of “in the long haul” is fundamental. The fact is that international agreements develop at a glacial pace almost regardless of the subject matter. Further, in this area the national laws are so complex and divergent, that convergence -- much less harmonization -- may well be very difficult to achieve. In addition, the global nature of the Internet causes an expansion of the number of entities that need to come to an agreement.

We may have a window of time in which to address these issues if we do not proceed at the glacial pace at which international agreements have commonly proceeded. The reason for the window is that the most difficult problems arise on the retail level, and, although transactions on the retail level are expanding very rapidly, they remain at a very low level. A recent report (July 19, 1999) prepared by The Boston Consulting Group indicates that revenues from online retailing in North America are expected to exceed $36 billion by the end of 1999, a projected growth rate of 145% from 1998. Total 1998 online revenues across all categories reached $14.9 billion, representing 0.5 % of all retail sales. Online orders in 1998 were up 200% and the number of online shoppers was up 300%. Inefficiencies in the legal infrastructure will therefore have their usual negative effects on price and volume and lost opportunities. However, it is now becoming clear that these inefficiencies will have the more profound effect in the e-commerce market of reducing power of a strong multiplier that appears to be at work. A recent report (“The Emerging Digital Economy II”, dated June 22, 1999) from the US Commerce Department indicates that information technology industries contributed more than one-third of U.S. economic growth between 1995 and 1998, even though they account for just 8 percent of gross domestic product.


Serious consideration must be given to the possibility that “trusted systems” may be the most powerful approach to providing jurisdictional solutions in the immediate term. Jurisdictional issues will be avoided as a practical matter if the consumer has confidence: (1) that the goods and services will be as promised; (2) that his or her payment and related data will be kept confidential; (3) that delivery will be timely and convenient; and (4) that misunderstandings can be addressed in a quick and simple and preferably online manner. The use of a trusted third party guarantor puts the parties and particularly the consumer in the position of fundamentally not caring about jurisdictional questions. Of course, the issues remain for us lawyers, as an academic matter, and for the periodic unusual case. But it is an excellent outcome from the standpoint of all parties if jurisdiction issues become irrelevant.

This is nothing new. In the Renaissance period, the right paper put in the right independent trusted hands was good funds from London to Lombardy and from Paris to Prague. Modern banks have their origin in that phenomenon. One of the principal early guaranty systems that operated in this way and had its origin in Germany in a small building over whose front door hung a shield that was painted red. The German for “red shield” is “Rot Schild,” or, as we know the name, “Rothschild.” That red shield, in modern computer terms, is an “icon.” Trusted systems identified by an icon have the potential to sharply reduce jurisdictional conflicts as a practical matter.

Current electronic trusted systems may be too weak or too focused (e.g., deal with privacy issues only) to creates an adequate level of trust on all sides and within the time frame that the pace of the Internet demands. This area needs to be explored on a priority basis.


PAYMENT SYSTEMS / BANKING Articles  A Framework for Global Electronic Commerce  Computer Money - Some Legal Considerations by Alan L. Tyree  Couriers Without Luggage: Negotiable Instruments and Ditigal Signatures, Jane Kaufman Winn  Digital Cash and the Regulators by J. Orlin Grabbe  Electronic Payment Systems: The Legal Perspective by Simon Pollard, Lawyer, Gilbert & Tobin  Emerging Electronic Methods for Making Retail Payments  Gateways to the Global Market: Consumers and Electronic Commerce Background Paper, by Carey Heckman  The Impact of Electronic Cash: A Strategic Perspective, by David Birch  Implications of the Use of Digital Cash for Banking Law, Privacy and Security, and Law Enforcement, Colloquium conducted by Professor Greg Tucker  Open Systems, Free Markets, and Regulation of Internet Commerce, 72 Tulane L. Rev. 1177 (1998), Jane Kaufman Winn  Selected U.S. Legal Issues in Issuance of Electronic Money, by John D. Muller  The Virtual Marketplace, by John K. Halvey  Validation of Electronic Signatures, by Hans Nilsson and Denis Pinkas  Will Electronic Money be Adopted in the United States? by Barbara Good, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Working Paper 9822 Cases Legislation / Congressional Activity       H.R. 10 financial modernization markup by House Banking Committee (includes provisions on ATM surcharge disclosure, financial privacy, and report to Congress on Internet banking) Rep. Leach statement on privacy provisions added to H.R. 10 by House Committee Rep. Roukema statement on ATM surcharge disclosure provisions added to H.R. 10 House Banking Subcommittee on Capital markets schedules hearings on influence of technology on bank capital markets activities, starting March 25th Consumer Credit Card Protection Amendments of 1999, H.R. 900, introduced by Rep. LaFalce (if this URL does not work, add a colon at the end) Hearing on proposed Know Your Customer regulations, March 4, House Committee on Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law

Web Links  Accredited Standards Committee X9 subcommittee x9A submits x9.59--Account-Based Secure Payment Objects as a Draft Standard for Trial Use  Australia Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, “Putting Australia on the New Silk Road”  Bankers Roundtable--Banking Industry Technology Secretariat (BITS) to address cyberbanking issues  Berkeley Center for Law & Technology



Commerce on the Net: Electronic Banking Congressional Internet Caucus Electronic Payments Forum March 1999 Meeting Report Emerging Methods for Making Electronic Payments European Commission proposes a directive on distance selling of financial services European Commission proposes a framework for the European financial services sector to facilitate cross-border operation European Commission Joint Research Centre Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, draft Study on Electronic Payment Systems Federal Reserve request for comment on amendments to Regulation CC to facilitate electronic return of unpaid checks FDIC’s Public Hearing Concerning Stored Value Cards And Other Electronic Payment Systems, September 12, 1996 Financial Action Task Force Annual Report on Money Laundering Typologies Free Guide to Internet Law Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies symposium on The Internet and the Sovereign State, including papers on jurisdiction and offshore finance Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) specification released by Banking Industry Technology Secretariat International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Committee TC 68-Financial Services Internet Open Trading Protocol Version 1.0 Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce Law on the Internet Letter to FTC from Henry Perritt, Jr. on the protection of market structure and consumers NAHA Bill Payment Council issues for comment--Business Practices for Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment National Archives and Records Administration regulations on Electronic Records Management 1997 statistics on payments systems in the G-10 Countries OCC’s safety and soundness issues in operating an electronic payment system. Report of the UNCITRAL Working Group on Electronic Commerce on the Work of its 34th Session (February 8-19) Report to the Council of The European Monetary Institute on Prepaid Cards Submission by the United States to the World Trade Organization General Council on the WTO Work Program on Electronic Commerce OCC 2B February 1 draft. Memo from the Reporter on Electronic Commerce Rules in UCC 2B and coordination with UETA. Letter from the Bank Working Group on the ability to opt-in to the contract formation provisions of UCC 2B. The UCLA Online Institute for Cyberspace Law and Policy Uniform Electronic Transactions Act January 29 draft U.S.-U.K. joint statement on electronic commerce World Trade Organization press release: WTO Financial Services Agreement entered into force on March 1 World Wide Web Consortium draft Common Markup for Web Micropayment Systems