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Perhaps there is a market for some kind of service that allows you to make small 5 or 10 cent charges. All of these charges are grouped together and you make a

by Pheter 15y ago

Perhaps there is a market for some kind of service that allows you to make small 5 or 10 cent charges. All of these charges are grouped together and you make a payment at the end of the month in one go so the the fees are reduced. Or it could work the other way round, you top up your 'account' with amounts from, let's say, $10 upwards. This could be monetized by charging businesses to integrate your service into their products.

michaelchisari 15y ago
I had an idea for a startup around this, and got pretty far in spec'ing it out and seeing what could be done. But what I found, when reading about previous attempts, was that the technical and business side weren't the barrier to entry, it was the legal problems that arose. Whenever systems like this have popped up, it's a matter of days before organized crime and others game the system to do things like launder money. It's unfortunate, but it seems as though the only entities with the legal and administrative teams capable of handling that are the credit card companies. And they're not particularly interested in micro-payments, it seems.
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  I agree that organised crime is the main adversary to such a system, but I believe I have developed a miraculous mix of technology to thwart them that this margin is unfortunately too narrow to contain.
DeanCollinsLCC 15y ago
The pre-loaded stored value cards has been done before, it's hard to get people to purchase $10 for something that they dont know in advance where they are going to be spending it. Google "Beenz" for some history about why this failed in the past. I think the future is a "per annum" paywall model for low value amounts eg i'd be happy to pay for NYtimes for $12 a year (i like the $1 per month price point) but i wont pay their current price point, so you arent payign per article as such but the ability to come back for a year and access everything on an all you can eat model.
prawn 15y ago
One of my ideas in this space was post-pay micropayments. Instead of asking for money up front and then allowing people to spend that in a trickle on individual articles, you would count views to stories by people (logged to user table or just using a cookie) and then guilt-induce people to donate. "You've read 46 articles over the last month. Contribute $9.20 now (20c per article) - we'd really appreciate it."
crdoconnor 15y ago
I think skype could do this (and frankly, I'm mystified that they haven't), but I know of few other companies that have such a wide user base who keep their accounts charged up regularly.

by Pheter 15y ago

michaelchisari 15y ago

I had an idea for a startup around this, and got pretty far in spec'ing it out and seeing what could be done. But what I found, when reading about previous attempts, was that the technical and business side weren't the barrier to entry, it was the legal problems that arose. Whenever systems like this have popped up, it's a matter of days before organized crime and others game the system to do things like launder money. It's unfortunate, but it seems as though the only entities with the legal and administrative teams capable of handling that are the credit card companies. And they're not particularly interested in micro-payments, it seems.

jacques_chester 15y ago
I agree that organised crime is the main adversary to such a system, but I believe I have developed a miraculous mix of technology to thwart them that this margin is unfortunately too narrow to contain.

DeanCollinsLCC 15y ago

The pre-loaded stored value cards has been done before, it's hard to get people to purchase $10 for something that they dont know in advance where they are going to be spending it. Google "Beenz" for some history about why this failed in the past. I think the future is a "per annum" paywall model for low value amounts eg i'd be happy to pay for NYtimes for $12 a year (i like the $1 per month price point) but i wont pay their current price point, so you arent payign per article as such but the ability to come back for a year and access everything on an all you can eat model.

prawn 15y ago

One of my ideas in this space was post-pay micropayments. Instead of asking for money up front and then allowing people to spend that in a trickle on individual articles, you would count views to stories by people (logged to user table or just using a cookie) and then guilt-induce people to donate. "You've read 46 articles over the last month. Contribute $9.20 now (20c per article) - we'd really appreciate it."

crdoconnor 15y ago

I think skype could do this (and frankly, I'm mystified that they haven't), but I know of few other companies that have such a wide user base who keep their accounts charged up regularly.