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Credit card fee structures make it a little complicated. Generally speaking, you'd want to pool both the input and the output, and then use paypal or something
by enkiv2 9y ago
Credit card fee structures make it a little complicated. Generally speaking, you'd want to pool both the input and the output, and then use paypal or something similar -- i.e., require a minimum of a couple dollars to be put in escrow, and then actually flush the payment once it reaches a couple dollars. That way, transaction fees don't totally overwhelm actual payments.
I haven't seen general-purpose systems optimized for micropayments in this way. Aside from flattr, I've seen token-coin (a blogging platform, essentially), and places like patreon roll their own system internally.
- wuliwong 9y agoI wonder if it could be done where the service acts essentially as a bank but does not use fractional reserve policies. So a user A adds $100 to their account. We keep a log and add that $100 to our "real" bank account. User A then pays User B $0.01. So we keep it in our ledger that $99.99 is for User A and $0.01 is for User B. But we don't make any actual bank transactions until a withdrawal request happens. There is probably some sort of regulation around this but maybe we do it like SecondLife with Lindens and then people can cash out their Lindens later.
- enkiv2 9y agoNo, this is totally reasonable and basically what I meant by 'escrow' in my original comment. Most systems that perform microtransactions & handle credit card stuff themselves basically do it this way -- including Google, when it comes to Adsense and Adwords.