17 Jul 2003 | mark said...

Robert X. Cringely foresaw this a while ago. But I think BitPass' "advisory board" got it wrong. Micropayments should be about tipping and volunteer payments, not paying for content. I'm perfectly willing to tip obscurestore 5 cents every week, instead of PayPal's $2 minimum once.

18 Jul 2003 | Levi said...

I think volunteer is the way to go...

18 Jul 2003 | Paul said...

I agree on that, Mark and Levi - it should be about tipping, ideally. If I read or watch something valuable online (as I have a lot this past week alone), I'm more inclined to seek out a "donate now!" button or similar afterwards. I think the entire upfront payment model is shaky.

That said, BitPass looks nice enough. It looks like Amazon is ready to gear up for payments, though, and that would probably be more visible. I suspect that companies like Flooz would do worlds better with a big name behind them. Amazon is one of the few that could pull it off.

18 Jul 2003 | Darrel said...

What Mark said.

Oh--and Flooz failed because of a god-awful name.

18 Jul 2003 | g said...

I have never seen the problem with using a credit card for micropayments. How is that more of a hassle then signing up for a "bitpass", activating/charging the card and then finding merchants that accept it? Let the credit card company deal with the fact that I make 372 transactions per day all under $1. It's simply "not my problem" and the existing system (major credit cards) scales down just fine for the average consumer.

18 Jul 2003 | pb said...

PayPal's minimum is $0.01 (actually 1 Yen). Since PayPal has a $0.30 flat fee, the effective minimum is $0.32 cents if you want to ear a penny.

Tipping will never work since the volume will never approach what can be achieved with real charges.

Micropayments will never gain much traction because it's not an efficient way to charge for smaller purchases. That is best served by advertising and subscriptions.

19 Jul 2003 | Submunition said...

we posted on this a little while back. seems like a good idea, it just needs to take off as a standard, with a large user base, etc.

paypal got it for easy ecommerce transactions, so maybe bitpass can get it right for small transactions.

i definitely feel that the niche is there!

19 Jul 2003 | KoolKeith said...

Looks like Amazon may be getting into PayPal's game.

20 Jul 2003 | zlog said...

I think they are still going about charging for micro payments the wrong way.

If they had a better system for payment, for example;

The thing people are buying is 0.25. On each alternate purchases you either get the pay meant or the company pockets it. This could be changed to every 3rd one or whatever.

This method would need the backing of a big credit card company (MasterCard etc.).

17 Jan 2004 | Sampson said...

For example, if you see an AIM window peeking out from behind your browser and you click on it, that window will come to the front, but the main application window will not. The Mail.app/Activity Viewer is another example. The Aqua system of layers works well in many instances, but not in all. Thank goodness that the Dock is always there to come to the rescue. I know that clicking on an application icon in the Dock will always result in not only the application coming to the front, but also any non-minimized windows associated with it. And if the application is active but no windows are open, clicking on the Dock icon should create a new window in that application.

17 Jan 2004 | Sampson said...

This topic is one we will tackle later in this article, but it refers to making sure that your application and the dock aren't fighting it out for supremacy of the screen.

17 Jan 2004 | Giles said...

At WWDC, I listened to Apple representatives make some excellent points about taking the time to build a 100%-compliant Aqua application, and I think all developers need to look beyond the code and listen to what the folks at Apple have to say

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