Whatever Happened to Micropayments?

prostoalex writes "Remember Flooz? Or Beenz? With a few notable successes (PayPal, and that's about it) online micropayment industry is saving its success stories for future generations. New York Times reports about two nascent micropayment systems, one coming out of Stanford, one out of MIT, that are supposed to help the content producers and Internet users to engage in less-than-a-dollar financial transactions without huge overhead costs, so typical of credit card payments. BitPass requires you to purchase a virtual debit card with a certain amount on it to pay for products and services, and PepperCoin consolidates numerous micropayments into one bill that is then split between the content providers that managed to sell their product to the Internet user." I still believe that single penny transactions will revolutionize the net.

micropayments on /.

[gokubi]

I still believe that single penny transactions will revolutionize the net.

Plus, a micropayment system on /. would allow us to quantify the value of the elusive first post:

320 refreshes waiting for next story
1 hit Reply page
0 hits to preview page (and it shows)
1 hit submit page
75 refreshes to see if FP gets modded down

at $0.01 per Slashdot page hit, an FP would be worth $3.97.

Yeah

[SpanishInquisition]

I'll bet ya $0.000838 that it's not over yet.

Superman III

[pw1972]

Yeah, haven't you all seen Superman III. All those 1/10 penny transactions can make you rich like Richard Pryor!

Whatever Happened to Micropayments?

[GMontag]

Whatever Happened to Micropayments?

I believe they fell through the cracks.

The real reason micoropayments haven't worked:

[thud2000]

The stupid names. "Flooz"? "Beenz"? And I'm not thrilled with "PepperCoin," either.

Re:micropayments on /.

[GMontag]

Er... how much for +1 Karma?

Priceless.

Sarcasm?

[Plutor]

Disaffected youth #1: I still believe that single penny transactions will revolutionize the net.
Disaffected youth #2: Are you being sarcastic, dude?
Disaffected youth #1: [dejectedly] I don't even know anymore.

Re:Superman III

[Anonymous Coward]

Just make sure you put the decimal point in the corect place. You don't want to end up in a Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass prison.

What if micropayments just worked?

[192939495969798999]

I hereby declare the following idea mine: what if you just charged micropayments, and it worked? Suppose that it costs 3 cents to process a 1 cent transaction, but if you're doing 80 billion transactions a month, you don't care because:
1) one day, people will find a way to make it profitable, and
2) when that day comes, you'll already own the market & make back everything you lost.
Just do business & wait for technology to catch up. There's too much fussing about whether or not it would be profitable from the get-go.

Well...

[Prince_Ali]

They would have to agree to an expense account for buying Karma. I'm not cutting into my profits for a few extra points when... I've probably said too much.

Re:Yeah

[legojenn]

$0.000838

Wow, now THAT's what I call a MICROpayment.

It must be at least $1.50 Canadian.

distributed micropayment model

[flyneye]

how about i'll write this software so you can send me your credit card number and put it in a pool of other numbers,then,we just skim off the top of everybodys card so we can all enjoy the benefits of distributed payment.The more people who send me,Al Franken,their credit card numbers,the cheaper it will be for all of us,especially me, Al Franken.
(this advertisement brought to you by the Democratic party)