Little Sense in Micropayments?

Not a sure thing, but as this piece notes, if the online porn industry cannot make micropayments for content work, who can?

Comments

[Warren]

The article says that nobody’s been able to make it work yet. It also says that some people are still trying. In a free market, that’s all that matters.

[Jean Bart]

I can think of one product that has been very successful regarding micropayments – France’s minitel system. Traditionally it has been a system of small charges for looking up a phone number and other like information (it has expanded in services over the years, but its ability to be an electronic phone book is still a mainstay); and it has made France Telecom a lot of Francs (and now euros).

[Gary Gunnels]

BTW, the minitel system has been in place and profitable since ~1981.

[R. C. Dean]

The minitel system was established in 1983, when France Telecom was still an arm of the state (it didn’t go public until 1991).

I, personally, would not regard a state monopoly as a good business model for making micropayments work.

[alkali]

I, personally, would not regard a state monopoly as a good business model for making micropayments work.

I dunno about that. Query whether you could buy any product for less than a dollar if the state monopoly on legal tender didn’t subsidze the cost of small change.

[keith]

Alkali:

Fascinating! Out of curiosity, is that why there are private bank printed banknotes in Hong Kong for HK$10 and up, but government money for smaller bills and coins?

[R C Dean]

Nice non sequitur, alkali. Note that I didn’t say there were no state-sponsored monopolies (indeed, no monopoly in history has ever maintained itself for any length of time without state support). Note that I didn’t say that state sponsored monopolies didn’t “work” in the sense that they exist and turn a profit of sorts..

I just said that I didn’t regard minitel as providing a business model for getting micropayments to “work” because it started using micropayments when it was a state monopoly.

See the difference?

[Jean Bart]

R.C. Dean,

The fact is that it did and continues to work. In fact, the minitel system was never a state monopoly in what it did business most of its business in – as a phone and general information directory.

[Jean Bart]

R.C. Dean,

Ergo, France Telecom was a state monopoly; the information that the minitel system provides never was. Frenchmen voted with their wallets; they like the system. Disqualifying merely because a state monopoly ran it, in other words, is stupid.

[Jon H]

What unit would the porn industry use for micropayments?

The spurt?

[kevrob]

I expect that Minitel’s micropayments work because the charge for some small service or other is put on one’s monthly phone bill. Is that so, J-B? People are accessing similar content on their cell phones/text messagers/PDA’s, using some portion of their contracted minutes to get the info.

Porn’s problem may not be the convenience of micropayment, but the desire of users who would be happy to pay, if they could remain anonymous. Sex sites use a credit card-based system to insure that the user is of legal age, and many won’t trust that info to such businesses.

iTunes, Rhapsody and the like are using some form of micropayment, aren’t they? Let’s see how succesful they are.

Kevin

[Will Spencer]

Internet users are accustomed to free content, there is no shortage of free content on the Internet today, and the amount of free content is growing rapidly.

Internet users are willing to pay for very very little Internet content.

The Internet, except for network connectivity, has become an advertising supported service.