MoneyNews: What make you decide to launch a new e-currency, and why through a New Zealand financial company?

Jeremy Bonnardel: The idea to launch a new e-currency came about 1 year ago when we saw the situation of the market: E-gold became a useless currency as nobody could exchange it due to the criminal cases opened by the US authorities, and there were few alternatives: 1 “big players” especially active in Russia, and 3 or 4 minor e-currencies. Each of those e-currencies has good and bad points, and so the idea came to create a new e-currency that would have both good points of all “concurrents”.

Considering the e-gold case, then the e-bullion case, we understood that the legal aspect was very important. Why to be registered in Nevis or Panama, if you operate from the USA? We decided to absolutely avoid countries more known for laundering narco-dollars than for hosting honest companies, and found that New Zealand allows financial companies to operate in such conditions that will fulfill our needs. That is why we decided to register our company as a New-Zealand financial company.

MoneyNews: Have you any other kind of businesses, which has no connection with ECUmoney?

JB: The company was registered especially for ECUmoney, but we have plans to offer later more usual financial Services as loans, deposits, and bank cards.

MoneyNews: How many accounts are registered in ECUmoney, and from which geographical location?

JB: Well we really opened some days ago, so statistics would not mean a lot. What is interesting is to see that we register about 50/80 users by day, located all over the world.

MoneyNews: One of your assertions is that ECUmoney is 100% backed by hard currencies. Do you plan to be backed later by precious metals?

JB: No, and I will explain you why: Being backed by gold, for example, requests to have physical places to store the gold with extensive security measures, and we do not want to be involved in such business. Think that being backed by gold means that every time you have a new Client that purchases your e-currency, you must buy gold for the same amount. Do you really think that any e-currency that claims to be backed by gold, does this? Among them, only e-gold proved it by public audits.

MoneyNews: How will you process the control and audit of ECUmoney?

JB: We use bank accounts in New Zealand, and in Switzerland. We will mandate an independent reputable third-party to check our bank account balance, and at the same time to check the ECU accounts balance. They will then see if both amounts match, and we will publish the audit on our website. We will also see if they agree to publish the audit on their website. This third-party will be a company with a worldwide reputation of integrity for their audits.

MoneyNews: What’s the benefits of that model, where the payment system managed by the company?

JB: It gives us the legal possibility to offer financial Services and e-currency, according to the New Zealand financial sector regulations. It means that it is, for our Clients, a real security to work with a legal company.

MoneyNews: How is the security of the transactions guaranteed?

JB: All connections are encrypted and all data is stored encrypted. Transactions are immediate and irrevocable. We also offer the possibility to schedule payments, they are carried out in the same way than immediate payments, if the payer account balance authorizes the transaction of course.
Sorry but I can not disclose any details about how we secure our system.

MoneyNews: What requirements have to fit Exchanger, which want to cooperate with you?

JB: For us, exchanger may be individuals as registered companies. To be registered as an ECU exchanger, documents must be submitted: Individual persons must submit their ID documents, and companies must submit company documents and the ID of one of their directors.
Then we decide to accept or reject the candidate, according to various details. For example, we will accept more easily an individual or a company that has a checkable background in the e-currency market. We are aware that some scammers will try to get our “ECU exchanger” status to defraud Clients, and do our best to avoid this.

MoneyNews: There is information about some Special Numbers. What do you mean?

JB: For specific reasons, some Clients can like to have for example the account number E9998877, if it matches with their business phone number, for example. We were surprised to see that the account E8888 has been asked already 7 times in 4 days! The first Client who asked it, go it.

MoneyNews: How many people work in ECUmoney? What’s the content of Russian Representation of this system?

JB: Our Support team is made of 4 persons, one for each language we support: English, German, French and Russian. Then we have 3 persons who administrate the company and who are Associates in the Company.
About Russia, one person cares about the Russian support. We have no more presence in Russia than in any other country, even if one of our servers is located in Moscow. Nevertheless, as Russia appears to be a major player in the financial world, it is possible that we decide to open an office there in the near future.

MoneyNews: In what is ECUmoney interested by the Russian market, what are your plans here?

JB: Russia has a very strong potential for an e-currency and we plan to introduce ECU in various domains. Russia has already well established e-currencies, but as they are Russian made and owned, they are sometimes not convenient to use for paying Services outside Russia. We want ECU to be available so that Russian people may purchase ECU in Russia, and use ECU in AND outside Russia.
Due to the specificity of the Russian market, we know that it will take time, but we have time!

MoneyNews: What are your plans for the development of ECUmoney?

JB: As we are allowed to offer usual financial services by our juridical structure, we plan to mix ECU with traditional Services, for example bank cards and deposits. That should be implemented mid-2009, after ECU has got a solid international presence.

Jeremy Bonnardel, Director of ECUmoney Limited