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Is there an actual market for micropayments? I would imagine someone would have built a wallet for small-value tokens, and a cheap way to transact with them. Bu

• PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  The overwhelming majority of the income for Ardour (how I make a living) arrives in the form of payments of < US$12 (and a substantial chunk of those are for US$1). PayPal's micropayment system saves us $23c per $1 transaction, which is huge.
  • DoreenMichele 5y ago
    This is news to me. Can you elaborate on their micropayment system or point to a source?
    • PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      The fee structure is 5% + $0.05 (in the USA at least). It is beneficial up to about $12. These are not "classic micropayments" in the sense of what was being discussed in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But very beneficial if you do lots of low value transactions. https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees (Click on "Micropayments") You cannot use both fee structures on a single PayPal account, so to use them effectively you either need (a) all transactions < $12 (b) all transactions > $12 (c) two PayPal accounts with your own software using the correct account based on the transaction amount.
      • DoreenMichele 5y ago
        Thank you.
• dan-robertson 5y ago
  My understanding is that there is a big psychological difference between something that costs nothing and something that costs 1¢, to the extent that even if (true) micropayments were possibly with current normal services, they probably wouldn’t be used because it is typically hard enough to get a customer to part with any cash at all that it isn’t worth it for very small amounts.