I'm not a tech guy, but doesn't it seem that micropayments (meaning $1 on down to fractions of a cent) should be feasible to implement?
The need for easy, painless micropayments (as opposed to free or subscription, with no middle ground) is pretty obvious. (Scott McLeod makes a great case for micropayments). Let the people vote with their pocketbooks--creators that the Net audience likes will make money and the rest won't. It all seems simple enough in principle. (Speaking as a writer, I'd much rather charge 50 cents for a book and reach an audience of millions, than charge $7-8 and only reach a few thousand...the Net seems ideally suited to such a system in principle.)
Now, isn't such a system technologically feasible?
Said system should be like PayPal, but structured for small charges based on a flat %, not a minimum charge of 30 cents...users would pre-pay into their account (not unlike phone calling cards) and then, if they are making money, they could cash out. The system has to be "universal" (one or two companies handling this), but the big advantage is that I don't have to pull out my credit card with every site I visit. (Couldn't there be some kind of tracking or account management system in place to secure this?)
When I visit a "charge" page, I see a click box such as "This page costs 2 cents," with Okay / No Thanks click boxes. Such a system has to absolutely be such that you can't be charged with explicitly clicking "okay."
By orchestrating through one or two key providers, they could establish concrete terms of services for pages accepting these payments so there is no unethical conduct (like the "pay spam" alluded to earlier). Of course, this company allows users to check balances at any time and review all charges.
Wait, this sound suspiciously like the pitch for MS Passport, doesn't it?
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I'm not a tech guy, but doesn't it seem that micropayments (meaning $1 on down to fractions of a cent) should be feasible to implement?
The need for easy, painless micropayments (as opposed to free or subscription, with no middle ground) is pretty obvious. (Scott McLeod makes a great case for micropayments). Let the people vote with their pocketbooks--creators that the Net audience likes will make money and the rest won't. It all seems simple enough in principle. (Speaking as a writer, I'd much rather charge 50 cents for a book and reach an audience of millions, than charge $7-8 and only reach a few thousand...the Net seems ideally suited to such a system in principle.)
Now, isn't such a system technologically feasible?
Said system should be like PayPal, but structured for small charges based on a flat %, not a minimum charge of 30 cents...users would pre-pay into their account (not unlike phone calling cards) and then, if they are making money, they could cash out. The system has to be "universal" (one or two companies handling this), but the big advantage is that I don't have to pull out my credit card with every site I visit. (Couldn't there be some kind of tracking or account management system in place to secure this?)
When I visit a "charge" page, I see a click box such as "This page costs 2 cents," with Okay / No Thanks click boxes. Such a system has to absolutely be such that you can't be charged with explicitly clicking "okay."
By orchestrating through one or two key providers, they could establish concrete terms of services for pages accepting these payments so there is no unethical conduct (like the "pay spam" alluded to earlier). Of course, this company allows users to check balances at any time and review all charges.
Wait, this sound suspiciously like the pitch for MS Passport, doesn't it?