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Ask HN: Why aren't micropayments a thing?

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Re: Ask HN: Why aren't micropayments a thing?

#31

Post by GekkePrutser »

spurdoman77 wrote: post #14
mimikatz wrote: post #10

People don't like to do transactions. It taxes our brains and makes us make decisions constantly. We like all you can eat and watch as much as you like. Paying for things sucks even if you just pay small amounts.

Yeah. For example, thats why people like all-inclusive hotels. The reason is that you dont have to think about the prices all the time. You just go through the package only and thats it. The less tranactions, the better. At least for the majority of us. It is very rare to prefer doing many small transactions over one big.

Yep even if we end up paying more than we would have with separate billing, we don't care. It's a mental burden, I feel the same way.

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't micropayments a thing?

#33

Post by abeppu »

mimikatz wrote: post #10

People don't like to do transactions. It taxes our brains and makes us make decisions constantly. We like all you can eat and watch as much as you like. Paying for things sucks even if you just pay small amounts.

I get this, but also there's a class of things where we know we're constantly being charged by use, and we don't constantly think about it.

Gas, electricity, water are all cases where my use is metered, I _could_ try to micromanage it on a daily basis, but so long as my bills don't vary wildly from month to month, I don't pay especially close attention. To the degree that I self-regulate my use, it's more about the environment than the dollar cost. I don't think about it every time I take a shower or turn up my thermostat.

The amount of online stuff from for-profit institutions I read from month to month doesn't vary that much, and if I knew from habit what the typical range was, I think I could learn to be ok with that. But the current experience, where whenever someone links to something in a _different_ paywall than the ones I'm already in, I do have to think "would it be worth it to pay for this source?" and often the answer is "no".

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't micropayments a thing?

#34

Post by GekkePrutser »

wppick wrote: post #26
davidkellis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone hates paywalls

Yes, because they want you to pay for a monthly or yearly subscription and you just want to read one article and maybe never come back to their site. But if I can do a 1-click "pay 1/2 cent" to read the rest of the article that would be totally fair

That's not the only thing. It's the hassle as well.

First they want you to sign up for an account. Give a lot of personal data. Then set up a payment model, often recurring. Just to read one article? No way.

Micropayments will save some of that hassle but I don't want to have an account with every news site linked to by HN.

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't micropayments a thing?

#36

Post by waynesonfire »

mimikatz wrote: post #10

People don't like to do transactions. It taxes our brains and makes us make decisions constantly. We like all you can eat and watch as much as you like. Paying for things sucks even if you just pay small amounts.

maybe whats needed is a system that tallies up the sites you've visited and at the end of the month you can just say, allocate 5 bucks among them. Or if you've had a rough month, maybe don't give anything. Maybe you can distribute you payments once a year. Or make slight adjustments to it and not give a site any money if you feel.

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't micropayments a thing?

#37

Post by acjacobson »

posguy wrote: post #4

Processing a credit card costs $0.02 per card, plus interchange of up to 3%. Debit processing is $0.22 cents plus 0.05%. Both of these are the baseline cost, your merchant processor often won't be able to even get these rates for their own wholesale rates. Now try and build a micropayments ecosystem ontop of this infrastructure that is very expensive to interact with (in the context of $0.01 charges). Amazon can do i…

The answer to this, which I am a little surprised no one has tried to implement (maybe someone has tried?), is to charge the end customer in some larger amount - say $5 or $10, and then draw down the micro transaction amount as you go. So if you could pay $5 a month (or at a time) but gain access to every article, site, video, piece of content etc, and it auto deducts from your balance then you don't have the transaction cost to manage with the CC, and you don't have the friction of purchasing. The challenge here is like any two sided marketplace - you need consumers to pay, and then you need content providers to sign on to get enough on offer for it to be worth it for both sides.

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't micropayments a thing?

#38

Post by lostcolony »

choeger wrote: post #22
posguy wrote: post #4

Processing a credit card costs $0.02 per card, plus interchange of up to 3%. Debit processing is $0.22 cents plus 0.05%. Both of these are the baseline cost, your merchant processor often won't be able to even get these rates for their own wholesale rates. Now try and build a micropayments ecosystem ontop of this infrastructure that is very expensive to interact with (in the context of $0.01 charges). Amazon can do i…

I doubt that any transaction costs some percentage of the transaction's value. The true cost shouldn't differ whether I charge $1 or $10 (maybe large transactions incur extra costs for security measures). It's just a convenient way of pricing for the credit card company.

That's pricing in the risk of taking the charge. The $10 transaction is 10x as risky to a credit network's bottom line as the $1 transaction. That's also why the debit percentage is lower.

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't micropayments a thing?

#39

Post by GekkePrutser »

waynesonfire wrote: post #36
mimikatz wrote: post #10

People don't like to do transactions. It taxes our brains and makes us make decisions constantly. We like all you can eat and watch as much as you like. Paying for things sucks even if you just pay small amounts.

maybe whats needed is a system that tallies up the sites you've visited and at the end of the month you can just say, allocate 5 bucks among them. Or if you've had a rough month, maybe don't give anything. Maybe you can distribute you payments once a year. Or make slight adjustments to it and not give a site any money if you feel.

There've been several projects that did exactly that. Like Brave with their BAT tokens. But it never took off.

Personally I don't like them because these things don't normally opt you out of ad tracking as well. When I pay I want to be the customer and not be tracked. I also don't want to give any personal details. They know nothing about me when I buy a newspaper in the shop. It should be like this :)

Re: Ask HN: Why aren't micropayments a thing?

#40

Post by _abox »

rogerallen wrote: post #35

Hear, hear! I would love to give money to a "read-the-article.com" and have them dole out money on a per-article basis for articles I read online. They can make money on the float. Google & Apple should waive their 30% for this.

Like Blendle? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blendle
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