Flooz.com
Year First Appeared
1999
Creator
Robert Levitan, Spencer Waxman
Flooz.com was a dot‑com era service launched in 1999 that sold an online currency/e‑gift certificates redeemable at participating websites. After limited adoption and fraud, it suspended operations and became defunct in 2001.
Importance in Internet Culture
Flooz was an early high‑profile experiment in closed‑loop digital money; its collapse, alongside Beenz, showed how chargebacks, weak KYC/AML controls, and thin merchant networks can doom alternative payment schemes, steering the web back toward card‑based rails and informing later fraud‑control and stored‑value regulations.
Interesting Fact
In its bankruptcy the court allowed Flooz to notify an estimated 325, 000 creditors by email, a first for a U.S. bankruptcy proceeding. Earlier, Whoopi Goldberg not only endorsed Flooz but took equity, becoming the company’s largest non‑founder shareholder.