4 ms·

Paypal does do a "Micropayments Discount" for sums less than $10. It's still 5% + $0.05, so it won't work for your $0.01 suggestion, but you can ask for $0.25,

Paypal does do a "Micropayments Discount" for sums less than $10. It's still 5% + $0.05, so it won't work for your $0.01 suggestion, but you can ask for $0.25, although you get just over a half of it back ($0.13), which still feels might feel like armed robbery, but you'd be increasing your donation volume greatly. Perhaps a Gratipay, or Flattr link? edit: speeling edit: thought Flattr was dead -_-

oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
Why is there no gateway that can handle micropayments properly? Just do the following: * Let me (in whatever guise, publisher, consumer, etc.) have an account that I can deposit/withdraw real world money into. Charge me a fee (percentage/fixed/minimum/maximum/whatever the market is willing to pay) for these operations. * Let anyone transfer any amount of money (OK, impose some granularity, but make it like 20 decimal places, that's fine) from their account to another. Do all the right security stuff that we already do for this kind of thing to ensure no abuse. * If the cost of transfers exceeds the income from deposit/withdrawals, charge some additional fee on a certain number of transfers, or charge a percentage on every $x transferred, or whatever it takes, so long as micropayments are still possible. Now sit back and count the profit. How is this not a solved problem yet?
- clarkmoody 11y ago
  > Let anyone transfer any amount of money You would probably need a money transmitter license, which is hugely expensive and time-consuming. You will have to Know Your Customer to comply with anti money laundering regulations. Basically you idea is to setup a bank and make transfers between customers free, which some banks already do, though not to 20 decimal places :-) As a consumer, my choice is to now sign up for this tipping service, give them my identity, deposit some money, and then I can go tip a website $0.001 for a cat video. So now my identity and some of my money are tied up with the service. Bitcoin seems more appealing than that scenario. > How is this not a solved problem yet? Because the State controls the banking industry.
  - oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
    Yes, I should have made it clearer that I'm envisaging a bank setting this up rather than Joe P. Bloggs! Maybe I'm the only one who imagines they would be clicking "Donate $0.01" buttons all day, if it genuinely cost just $0.01, but it feels as though there's an awful lot of money to be made, even in banking terms.
  - mpeg 11y ago
    Ok wow that's a bit hardcore, I don't think you need to actually deposit money or become a bank. Call it AdPoints, you can buy 1000 AdPoints for $10. Then you spend these points in websites you enjoy. Add an API so they can be used as a virtual currency for goodwill (I liked this guy's post / comments, so I'll upvote him with my points) in those same third party sites. Get a couple big publishers on board and it could become a pretty good deal. You handle point purchase and deliver payouts to your publisher partners, add a reporting function to the API so they can overlay the revenue of adblock users vs non-adblock.
    - clarkmoody 11y ago
      If you're operating in a regulated regime as a legitimate company, then the state will want to ensure that users aren't laundering money through your service. Scenario: 1) Criminal outfit buys 100M AdPoints with dirty money 2) "Trusted parties" setup blogs and YouTube channels and has them get setup with the "publisher partners" 3) Criminal outfit "tips" innocuous quantities of money for cat videos and blog posts about gardening made by the "trusted parties" 4) "Trusted parties" cash out squeaky clean money > deliver payouts to your publisher partners Each partner would have to do the KYC/AML work for each content creator, but if they don't do it for donation sources, then you have the potential money laundering channel so the State will get involved.
      - mpeg 11y ago
        Well realistically you would just do your due diligence in each new partner site. Also it would be painfully inefficient to launder money like this, keep in mind you wouldn't even let people buy large quantities. In a real world scenario, you wouldn't even allow new partner sites to sign up online, instead you'd contact most of them via direct sales and vice versa. I'm thinking about the NYTs and Yahoos of the world, not cat blogs. I see your point, but this is more like buying world of warcraft currency than it is a bank.
- tobltobs 11y ago
  May be there is no need for this. All those cheap skates which are telling you that they would give something if there would be a micropayment solution, would not give a nickel, even with zero transaction costs.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  Because no one wants to set up the account to fund micropayments. Any solution which would require the visitor to pre-fund an account, no matter how small of an amount, is destined to fail.

oneeyedpigeon 11y ago

Why is there no gateway that can handle micropayments properly? Just do the following: * Let me (in whatever guise, publisher, consumer, etc.) have an account that I can deposit/withdraw real world money into. Charge me a fee (percentage/fixed/minimum/maximum/whatever the market is willing to pay) for these operations. * Let anyone transfer any amount of money (OK, impose some granularity, but make it like 20 decimal places, that's fine) from their account to another. Do all the right security stuff that we already do for this kind of thing to ensure no abuse. * If the cost of transfers exceeds the income from deposit/withdrawals, charge some additional fee on a certain number of transfers, or charge a percentage on every $x transferred, or whatever it takes, so long as micropayments are still possible. Now sit back and count the profit. How is this not a solved problem yet?

clarkmoody 11y ago
> Let anyone transfer any amount of money You would probably need a money transmitter license, which is hugely expensive and time-consuming. You will have to Know Your Customer to comply with anti money laundering regulations. Basically you idea is to setup a bank and make transfers between customers free, which some banks already do, though not to 20 decimal places :-) As a consumer, my choice is to now sign up for this tipping service, give them my identity, deposit some money, and then I can go tip a website $0.001 for a cat video. So now my identity and some of my money are tied up with the service. Bitcoin seems more appealing than that scenario. > How is this not a solved problem yet? Because the State controls the banking industry.
- oneeyedpigeon 11y ago
  Yes, I should have made it clearer that I'm envisaging a bank setting this up rather than Joe P. Bloggs! Maybe I'm the only one who imagines they would be clicking "Donate $0.01" buttons all day, if it genuinely cost just $0.01, but it feels as though there's an awful lot of money to be made, even in banking terms.
- mpeg 11y ago
  Ok wow that's a bit hardcore, I don't think you need to actually deposit money or become a bank. Call it AdPoints, you can buy 1000 AdPoints for $10. Then you spend these points in websites you enjoy. Add an API so they can be used as a virtual currency for goodwill (I liked this guy's post / comments, so I'll upvote him with my points) in those same third party sites. Get a couple big publishers on board and it could become a pretty good deal. You handle point purchase and deliver payouts to your publisher partners, add a reporting function to the API so they can overlay the revenue of adblock users vs non-adblock.
  - clarkmoody 11y ago
    If you're operating in a regulated regime as a legitimate company, then the state will want to ensure that users aren't laundering money through your service. Scenario: 1) Criminal outfit buys 100M AdPoints with dirty money 2) "Trusted parties" setup blogs and YouTube channels and has them get setup with the "publisher partners" 3) Criminal outfit "tips" innocuous quantities of money for cat videos and blog posts about gardening made by the "trusted parties" 4) "Trusted parties" cash out squeaky clean money > deliver payouts to your publisher partners Each partner would have to do the KYC/AML work for each content creator, but if they don't do it for donation sources, then you have the potential money laundering channel so the State will get involved.
    - mpeg 11y ago
      Well realistically you would just do your due diligence in each new partner site. Also it would be painfully inefficient to launder money like this, keep in mind you wouldn't even let people buy large quantities. In a real world scenario, you wouldn't even allow new partner sites to sign up online, instead you'd contact most of them via direct sales and vice versa. I'm thinking about the NYTs and Yahoos of the world, not cat blogs. I see your point, but this is more like buying world of warcraft currency than it is a bank.
tobltobs 11y ago
May be there is no need for this. All those cheap skates which are telling you that they would give something if there would be a micropayment solution, would not give a nickel, even with zero transaction costs.
s73v3r 11y ago
Because no one wants to set up the account to fund micropayments. Any solution which would require the visitor to pre-fund an account, no matter how small of an amount, is destined to fail.