| Essentially the problem with micropayments is microscams: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15592192 Stealth browser-mining lets everyone skip all the genuine attempts at transferring value and go straight to microscams. Edit: hoisted body of comment: "Unsolved, difficult problems of micropayments" - pay before viewing: how do you know that the thing you're paying for is the thing that you're expecting? What if it's a rickroll or goatse? - so do you give refunds a la steam? - pay and adverts: double-dipping is very annoying - pay and adverts: how do you know who you're paying? A page appears with a micropayment request, but how do you know you've not just paid the advertiser to view their ad? - pay and frame: can you have multiple payees per displayed page? (this has good and bad ideas) - pay and popups: it's going to be like those notification or app install modals, yet another annoyance for people to bounce off - pay limits: contactless has a £30 limit here. Would you have the same payment system suitable for $.01 payments and $1000 payments? How easy is it to trick people into paying over the odds (see refunds)? - pay and censors: who's excluded from the payment system? Why? Essentially the problem with micropayments is microscams. Part 2: business model problems! - getting money into the system is plagued by usual fraud problems of card TX for pure digital goods - nobody wants to build a federated system; everyone wants to build a Play/Apple/Steam store where they take 30% - winner-take-all effects are strong - Play store et al already exist, why not use that? - Free substitute goods are just a click away - Consumers will pirate anything no matter how cheap the original is - No real consumer demand for micropayments => lemma from previous 3 items: market for online goods is efficient enough to drive all marginal prices to zero - existing problem of the play store letting your kid spend all the money - friction: it would be great if you didn't have to repeatedly approve things, such as a micropayment for every page of a webcomic archive. But blanket approval lets bad actors drain the jar or inattentive users waste it and then feel conned - first most obvious model for making this work is porn, which is inevitably blacklisted by the payment processors, has a worse environment for fraud/chargebacks, and is toxic to VCs (see Patreon and even Craigslist) - Internet has actually killed previously working micropayment systems such as Minitel, paid ringtones (anyone remember the dark era of Crazy Frog?); surviving ones like premium SMS and phone have a scammy, seedy feel. - accounting requirements: do you have to pay VAT on that micropayment? do you have to declare it? Is it a federal offence to sell something to an Iranian or North Korean for one cent? |