Preliminary Studies On Legal System Of Electronic Payment

Electronic payment is the core and the base of e-commerce through which the parties in a transaction could finally realize the purpose of such transaction. However, our country's current electronic payment system comparatively lags behind the national e-commerce development, which impedes the further development of the information economy of our country. In order to modernize our nation's electronic payment system, the main barriers we are facing now are not technique and security problems, but rather the lack of the applicable legal system for the electronic payment that also accords with the circumstances of our country.The reality now is our scholar's studies in this regard are mainly focused on the economic side and as a result, only limited to various techniques of e-payment. Few people analyzed this issue from a legal viewpoint, say, the rights, obligations and potential legal risks of the parties involved in the electronic payment. Accordingly, few people conduct research on the completion of legal system of electronic payment in alliance with the current situation of our country.This paper based on the legal analysis of the electronic payment by adopting comparative study methods. This paper primarily discussed two major issues i.e. electronical transformation of payment methods and electronical transformation of payment instrument in the following order: Firstly, compare legal system of electronic fund transfer (EFT) in U.S.A. law and European Union law, which are relatively developed in the world, and comprehensively analyzed the meaning and the affection of their regulations of EFT as well; Secondly, pay attention to the new emerged legal system of electronic money in U.S.A. and European Union; Then, the supervision of electronic money institution, and the issuing, redeeming of electronic money; Finally, based on the analysis of present available regulations of our country about e-payment by reference to foreign law in the same respect, put forward my suggestions on the basic legal frame of our national e-payment.The whole paper is divided into 4 chapters and contains about 52,000 Chinese characters. The main contents of each chapter are as follows:Chapter One: legal definition of payment. This section analyzed the legal meaning and character of payment, and then defined concept of e-payment. Reference to development history of e-payment, this section addressed electronically transformation of payment methods and payment instruments. Chapter Two: the legal regulation of EFT. This section firstly summarized current legislation on e-payment throughout the world, and then focused on the legal systems in EFT in the U.S.A. law and in the European Union law.Chapter Three: legal system of electronic money. This section mainly analyzed character of electronic money, made a conclusion that electronic money is actually some sort of legal right of the holder to the issuer. After that, commented European Union's Directive on electronic money institution.Chapter Four: Chinese e-payment legal system. At first, this section introduced Chinese e-payment infrastructure, then analyzed available e-payment laws and regulations in China. At last, rendered my suggestion and opinions of the basic legal frame of our nation's e-payment system by reference to the relevant foreign laws and regulations in this regard.