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Tipjoy Raises $1 Million For Its Simple Micropayment Platform
- jmorin007 18y agoCongrats Ivan and Abby!
- drusenko 18y agoCongrats guys!
- immad 18y agoWow. Congratulations guys!
- iamelgringo 18y agoCongrats.
- aston 18y agoCongratulations, guys.
- mattmaroon 18y agoI hope your investors didn't pay by tipping you, or you'll only get about $200k :)
- ivankirigin 18y agoha! The good thing about moving to general purpose payments is that you can incent people to pay by removing the content if they don't. Free content stays free. So to carry the analogy, investors would lose the shares if they didn't pay.
- ivankirigin 18y agoI should also stress that for merchant support we'll allow you to mandate payment before accessing the content. Whatever way people want to sell their goods, we'll support it. We think that because things are digital, non-payment doesn't really matter. Digital media creators are always trying to enhance and connect to their 'tribe'. Putting a paywall in between your fans and your content turns them away. Very often it turns them to "piracy". Do you recall The Pirate Bay's policy on mandating payment? :-P And how much are people required to pay to read your blog?
- mattmaroon 18y agoI was just teasing you, I like the way you have it set up. I have a feeling it will lead to a higher total paid tip amount than requiring the credit card right away. I don't know what you mean about the Pirate Bay though.
- blader 18y agoCongrats guys! Remind me - who else in our round got funded?
- dc2k08 18y agowell done guys. what is $1million going to be spent on?
- axod 18y agoI'd assume lots to be spent on legal paperwork to enable people to withdraw money?
- maxklein 18y agoWell, I know the first thing I would buy would be a monocle.
- ivankirigin 18y agoA monocle behind my glasses would be too rich
- ph0rque 18y agohttp://tipjoy.com/jobs/ http://tipjoy.com/jobs/
- dbrush 18y agoBig ups to the Kirigins.
- netcan 18y agoYou know, it's surprising that banks have never entered this arena seriously.
- Prrometheus 18y agoIt's hard to innovate in regulated industries. Nothing is more regulated than money and banking.
- netcan 18y agoSure, but they are theoretically in more of a position to do so then anyone else (paypal, tipjoy, etc). They have the size to deal with it & they have the ability/experience to lobby Governments. They also already have their fairly usable online banking systems which would make a good base.
- ivankirigin 18y agoHave you ever talked to anyone who worked at a bank? They aren't exactly out for innovation.
- sethg 18y agoLeveraging yourself 30:1 to buy collateralized debt obligations doesn't count as innovation?
- ivankirigin 18y agoI do agree that there is a great deal of innovation on the high end. You should look into the automated traders they are making these days. Consumer facing services, not so much.
- bluelu 18y agoMaybe it's because the banks know all the legislations they have to fullfill when offering such a service (money laundring, etc...)
- DaniFong 18y agoWay to go Tipjoy!
- Tichy 18y agoGreat news
- davidw 18y agoNice! I'll be curious to see where this goes. It's a tough sector because of a lot of human factors (legal, micropayment issues), rather than necessarily technology. But if they make it work... it will be very interesting in a lot of ways.
- jacobbijani 18y agoSeriously. I have a feeling a lot of the money will go to figuring out a way to lower the cut the payment processors take.
- ivankirigin 18y agoThat's easy: use checking accounts. They are essentially free. That's why PayPal pushes their users towards them. Credit cards are the expensive ones. But the most effective way to reduce the percentage overhead is to make the transaction bigger. That's why Tipjoy's aggregation of payments is good: pay $1 in 100 different places, and your overhead for a credit card will be around 2.5% vs. 20% for a single $1 transaction. You can also negotiate to lower the overhead, and to my knowledge, that takes large usage more than it takes money. iTunes for example has 65M credit cards. They do whatever they want.
- jacobbijani 18y agoWell, clearly you have figured it all out :)
- litewulf 18y agoI really wish people would upvote the article linking to their actual blog. (Oh, and congrats :))
- HeyLaughingBoy 18y agoIt will be interesting to see what kind of new services will now come online as micropayments become more available.
- bprater 18y agoLong live micropayments! C'grats Ivan and team!