e-gold is an electronic currency that us backed up 100% by gold. In your account you hold a weight of gold that is physically stored in the e-gold vault. Using the web interface you can pay other e-gold account holders. There are several market makers available to buy and sell gold into and out of the system.

Apart from e-gold, there are also e-silver, e-platinum and e-palladium. All 100% backed by those metals.

Compared with credit card payments, e-gold has the advantage:
- you use a more stable currency (if you believe in gold)
- the payer decides how much he wants to pay.. there is no 'pulling' of money.
- spends are not reversible (as they are with credit cards, something heavily abused)