I imagine that you wouldn't actually have to process the transaction until somebody owes a largish ammount of money (relatively).
Something around $10-20.
What would work even better (this is how allofmp3.com used to work) would be to buy a bunch of credits...$10-$20 worth of them, then as you make "micropayments", it draws from this supply.
Google's ad program also works this way. You pay in $50 or so, then each click costs you $0.90 or $0.10 or whatever it is, it doesn't process a transaction for each one, it just draws from your reserve.
This is good because it encourages people to continue using the service until their balance is gone. This causes the cost of moving to another service to increase.
Doesn't Apple do this? If you make a purchase, you won't get a receipt until a few days later. It will aggregate all your "store" purchases across iTunes desktop, iTunes on devices, and the App Store on a weekly basis.
> It will aggregate all your "store" purchases across iTunes desktop, iTunes on devices, and the App Store on a weekly basis.
I don't know how they do it exactly but for what its worth I made a purchase on Monday and then again on Tuesday and I recieved seperate charges for each. Though each charge came 2 days after the purchase( Wednesday and Thursday).
For what it's worth I use the Canadian iTunes store.
I really don't think the buying credits would work better. It would work, but not better. The whole point of micropayments is spending a tiny bit of money. How is buying $10+ in credits beforehand a micropayment? Defeats the purpose.
It sounds like somebody needs to create a micropayment service.
I don't have the coding chops, but I know a lot of the people around here do.
You put $10 into a micropayment account that can then be used across websites like facebook or blogger, or whatever else service decides to do this.
I could even see ISPs rolling this into part of your payment plan for internet...$50 a month for access, $10 a month that gets picked at by people that use micropayments.
If anybody does this, will you buy me an Ariel Atom?
Something around $10-20.
What would work even better (this is how allofmp3.com used to work) would be to buy a bunch of credits...$10-$20 worth of them, then as you make "micropayments", it draws from this supply.
Google's ad program also works this way. You pay in $50 or so, then each click costs you $0.90 or $0.10 or whatever it is, it doesn't process a transaction for each one, it just draws from your reserve.
This is good because it encourages people to continue using the service until their balance is gone. This causes the cost of moving to another service to increase.
The idea of this isn't new, it's just stupid.