Uses

Sending private massage
Send to the receiver after encrypting with the receiver's public key.

Signing a message
Send to the receiver after encrypting with your private key.

Sending a signed private message
Encrypt a message with your private key, and then the receiver's public key.  Send that.

Electronic Commerce
Each party chooses a random private key, and derives a public key from that.  They send the public keys to each other.  Then each side can send encoded messages to the other including details of the transaction.  After their finished, forget the keys used (or not, that's OK too).