Electronic money as a factor in the development of the digital economy

One of the essential elements of the infrastructure of the digital economy is the e-money emerged as the product of a long evolution of types and forms of money. Interpretation of the origins and the reasons for the emergence of money is of genuine interest and has been generating fierce debate for centuries. The particular relevance of this problem is in the substitution of one form of money by another. The emergence of electronic money, deprived of a universal equivalent of a physical medium, requires the study of its nature and generic framework, taking into account the new realities of the post-industrial economic structure. The purpose of this article is to establish the relationships in the development of digital technologies and electronic money. We have substantiated the choice of the research methodology of the evolution of money. We have made a brief overview of the types and forms of money that influenced the development of technology. The reasons for the emergence of electronic money have been discussed. We proposed our own model of the evolution and relationships of the species and forms of money. We have given a definition of the digital (electronic) money, based on the content of the scale of the digital price for electronic currency. We propose to use the following definition of digital (electronic) money: «Digital (electronic) money is an information embodiment of a universal equivalent reflected on electronic (computer) media». The proposed interpretation of the digital money can be considered as a first step towards studying the issues of determining its value and purchasing power as an independent form of a universal equivalent; patterns of turnover in conjunction with other forms of money and commodity weight; searching for evaluation parameters for measuring and the degree of participation in the transaction; the selection of tools to regulate its turnover. The perspectives of use of electronic money in a digital economy have been the focus of our attention.