Although credit cards have been a major payment mode on the internet, there are some inherent disadvantages including security. If you are disinclined to use your credit card on the net, or do not have one, you will welcome e-gold and its advantages.

To set yourself up to use e-gold, you have to do the following:

1. Open an e-gold account online (if you don't have one yet). It will only take a few minutes, and it's free. Your account is protected by a confidential passphrase of your choice.
2. Put some funds into your e-gold account, using any number of ways: wire transfer, cheque, demand draft, money order, and of course credit card too. You may consult GoldDirectory.com for a list of independent exchangers for this purpose.

It's designed to serve as a global internet payment solution. And it's not just limited to the United States, it's even being promoted as e-dinar in Muslim countries. The pundits say that e-gold is set to become the worldwide currency of the worldwide web. With its growing acceptance, it has spawned an entire industry of e-gold related service providers. Here is a short list of independent exchangers offering useful services, including putting gold into your e-gold account.

How to fund your e-gold account
Check out the independent exchangers for the best service and rates for your currency or credit card. It may take some time to put gold into your account, especially if you are sending payment by offline methods such as wire transfer, so set up your e-gold account well in advance of your intended purchase.

To save on exchange charges incurred, ensure that your funding is sufficient to cover multiple transactions, including those anticipated in future. It is not all one-way, you can also receive gold (and other valuable metals such as silver, platinum and palladium) into your account from any e-gold account-holder.

Every e-gold transaction is backed by an equivalent weight of gold metal in allocated storage. For example, when you open an e-gold account and put funds into it, what is actually happening is that your payment is converted to an equivalent weight of gold metal credited into your account. Account balance can be monitored online.

How to use e-gold on PLANETS9.com
When you fill the order form for any of our services with your name, email address, birth data and submit it, the payment form from e-gold's secured site will then be automatically presented to you.

1. You will need to fill in your e-gold account number and confidential passphrase, and submit this payment form to e-gold's secured site.
2. Then you will see a payment preview screen, asking you to either confirm or cancel the transaction. If you confirm it, the transaction will be recorded on e-gold's database and you will be issued a batch number. You will need this number for any future reference to this transaction, so better to note it down. You will also see a "Continue" link (to return to our PLANETS9.com system and automatically get the report you have just paid for).
3. Click on this "Continue" link and your personalised report will start to flow into your screen in a matter of seconds. You are advised to preserve a copy of this report on your computer for future reference by using the browser's File Save menu command to save it as an html file to local disk.