I was interested by this little news item from Slashdot today: Whatever Happened to Micropayments?
The idea of micropayments isn’t new at all – in fact, when I was invited to teach a class to first year business students at Seneca College back in 1996 it was to highlight Commerce and the Internet – basically, how the Internet could potentially evolve into a practical way to spend and make money. Looking over my lesson plan shows that even in 1996 I was proclaiming the future of micropayments – at the time, Millicent by Digital. (Note the WAY before it’s time reference to “a new band can receive a small payment everytime one of their songs is downloaded!”)
The Slashdot article references the fact that two companies are once again trying to bring back the micropayment, something I’ve since stated I think is best instituted by banks rather than independent companies. Either way, I think the idea of being able to pay $0.10 for an article rather than subscribe to a service for $19.99/year is WAY overdue, and I honestly can’t figure out why it’s taken this long to happen. Heck, even PayPal or NETeller should have been smart enough to create micropayment browser plug-ins by now.
Should be interesting to see if anything comes of this.
Cheers!