Metering (was Re: Bitpass Micropayments)

[Tony Smith <ts@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Micropayments has been in the too hard basket for way too long for the 
good of many once seductive business models, so I guess most of us have 
just stopped thinking too hard about it.

Maybe it's time to think outside the square, and maybe there isn't 
anywhere more suitable that the remnant Xanadu community to think once 
more about the question.

Seeing Ian's detailed criticism of Rich Pasco's mention Bitpass 
micropayments including such reasonable assertions as:

> any pricing scheme with US$0.1 as the smallest creditable unit can not 
> be classed as micropayments ...
>
> True microscale charges (would have) US$ 0.0001...  as the default 
> payment unit, roughly (perhaps) the price of any word on a web page or 
> equivalent.
>
> Content payment negotiation is immediate, implicit and wholly hidden 
> from the user.

I couldn't help but think that the utility companies have long had no 
problem dealing with a similar problem, but they call it metering 
rather than "micropayments" and everybody knows exactly what they mean, 
especially that accepting metering allows you to avoid conscious 
payment decisions but still allows you to control your costs if and 
when you need to.

Of course the utilities have more clout in their threat to withdraw 
service for nonpayment of an account than an individual website 
publisher could hope for, but a combination of tying metering to credit 
cards and the kind of payment processing consolidation services that 
are already commonplace could get us past that objection.

Apache::ModMeter anybody?


Tony Smith
Meme Media
http://meme.com.au/
0405 499 718
03 9807 0017