[huem0n]

I've been wanting something like this for a long time. There's a lot of ways this could go wrong, but I hope it works.

I'd especially love a video platform using this model. I can't afford patreon for every YouTube channel, but I'd love to pay 10¢ per hour of video watched.

[etskinner]

$0.10 per hour is already WAY more than a creator usually gets from your viewing. I'd happily pay that amount for good youtube-like content. Creators would love it because it's far more money than they get now. Consumers would like it because for a lot of people it's cheaper than a subscription, and they could forgo ads

[strnisa]

Yes, Small Transfers can be used for pay-per-view or pay-per-minute billing models.

The platform's biggest risk that I see is a customer defaulting after using a merchant's service. The platform currently mitigates that with Stripe Radar, 3-D Secure, and spending caps, but I'm keen to hear anything specific you're thinking about.

[huem0n]

> customer defaulting after using a merchant's service

I think the defaulting rate would just get baked into the asking price. But I'm assuming there isn't a way to repeatedly systematically default to get unlimited free content.

[strnisa]

Each customer already has a limit on the amount they can owe before we require payment. Each customer account also requires a unique payment method, which must pass Stripe Radar and 3-D Secure checks. We plan to add more checks in the future.

[cedws]

I don’t know if it defeats the purpose but you could require an upfront, refundable deposit.

[strnisa]

Requiring money upfront would classify the platform as an e-money institution, which is highly problematic from the legal perspective.

[jazzyjackson]

How does tarsnap handle it? I think there's lots of services that bill up front... Isn't it only e-money if you can convert it back to cash?

[strnisa]

If you store funds for a specific service that you provide, it's fine. If it's for many services or services provided by others, it's legally problematic.

[strbean]

What if you inverted the trust equation by giving the money to the service provider immediately, rather than holding any of the up front payment?

[jazzyjackson]

Ah neat, thanks for the clarification.

[namibj]

> Requiring money upfront would classify the platform as an e-money institution, which is highly problematic from the legal perspective.

What if you just reserve it on the card?

[strnisa]

Online card holds typically expire in ~7 days (often sooner, depending on the issuer), which is too short for our use case.

[namibj]

I thought 30 days are an option at least when you can explain the reason/necessity to stripe?

Could be an option to funnel default-risky (as distinct from chargeback-risky!) customers to a customer-selectable hold amount rolling the per-transaction flat fee into basically a per-bill flat fee thus indirectly giving volume/commitment discounts to those that select 30-day intervals with large holds?

I guess ideally offer an option to force a billing (transaction finalization) to release the hold if a customer changes their mind (or just happened to use a debit card)...

Though even with 7 day holds it'd allow you to offer service to poor people (which mostly overlaps "people with bad credit") without the APIs having to maintain revenue margins large enough to just eat that default risk, and without having to hold onto any funds yourself.

[perilunar]

10¢ per hour seems low to me — I’d happily pay ~$1 per hour. $10 per week is less than I currently pay for subscriptions, and I don’t want to spend more than 10 hrs per week watching video anyway.

[crowbahr]

Where YouTube is my movie player and podcast player and general video player, all of which is done at 2x speed I can't imagine paying $4-6/day for YouTube.

Just my commute listening to a podcast that I downloaded before leaving would cost me $1.50 each way? Nah I'll keep my subscription thanks.

[TrinaryWorksToo]

Depends on the person's budget!