Just to pick up on one point here: the author suggests that his proposal will "enable micropayments", on the basis that "since this payment platform is handled

Just to pick up on one point here: the author suggests that his proposal will "enable micropayments", on the basis that "since this payment platform is handled by the credit card companies [...] they can easily charge only a percentage". This is not how interchange fees currently work. Visa/Mastercard/AmEx interchange fees are nearly always a percentage + flat rate: the exact same model as PayPal, et al. So whilst I suppose it is true that card issuers could only charge a percentage, this proposal has no incentive for them to do so.