Aaron Scullion of the BBC reports on the Oyster card, a new smart card about to be launched by Transport for London.

Each card has a unique ID number linked to the registered owner's name, which is recorded together with the location and time of the exchange every time the card is used. The data, retained for business purposes, could be released to law enforcement agencies under certain conditions.

The June 2003 issue of the Review of Network Economics was dedicated to the economics of payments and card network schemes. The Review is "an electronic-based refereed journal that publishes papers on the economics of network industries that have the primary purpose of reviewing, surveying, or providing a fresh perspective on the existing literature." Articles included:

• Theory of Credit Card Networks: A Survey of the Literature, by Sujit Chakravorti
• An Economic Analysis of the Determination of Interchange Fees in Payment Card Systems, by Jean-Charles Rochet and Jean Tirole
• An Introduction to the Economics of Payment Card Networks, by Robert M. Hunt
• The Theory of Interchange Fees: A Synthesis of Recent Contributions, by Jean-Charles Rochet
• Approaches to Regulating Interchange Fees in Payment Systems, by Joshua S. Gans and Stephen P. King
• Automated Teller Machine Network Pricing - A Review of the Literature, by James J. McAndrews
• What does it Cost to Make a Payment?, by David Humphrey, Magnus Willesson, Ted Lindblomand, and Goran Bergendahl
• Technology Adoption and Consumer Payments: Evidence from Survey Data, by Fumiko Hayashi and Elizabeth Klee

A leading group of computer security scientists (Dan Geer, Rebecca Bace, Peter Gutmann, Perry Metzger, John S. Quarterman, Charles Pfleeger, and Bruce Schneier) have written a paper about the risks to society from a Microsoft-dominated computing monoculture.

Most of the world‚s computers run Microsoft‚s operating systems, thus most of the world‚s computers are vulnerable to the same viruses and worms at the same time. The only way to stop this is to avoid monoculture in computer operating systems, and for reasons just as reasonable and obvious as avoiding monoculture in farming. Microsoft exacerbates this problem via a wide range of practices that lock users to its platform. The impact on security of this lock-in is real and endangers society.