I had heard about Google Checkout a while back and thought it made sense. After it doesn't hurt to have a competitor to PayPal, which I like.
Well, I ran across an article about it and decided to check it out and sign up. It seems pretty good. The idea of a central account that allows you to make purchases easily on-line is great, and their fees are low for sellers. And not passing the credit card along to vendors should help to reduce the security risk of that information being in many databases all over the place and more chances for the information to fall into the wrong hands.
But I was struck by a thought related to an interest I've had for several years now, and that is the question of Micro Payments. The challenge for selling things for small amounts of money, even fractions of a cent has been the costs involved with doing it. Some attempts have been made with systems that charge you a lump sum and then debit your account as you buy ring tones, music, photos, etc. The problem is that I don't think most Americans like this model. I always feel like my money is "tied up" when it could be doing other things for me. The other problem is fraud. Policing many millions of small transactions every day may be so costly that it eats into profits.
Well, I think I figured out the solution to the fraud issue a long time ago, but after mentioning it to a former employer who I thought might be interested, I have since kept my idea to myself. Perhaps I may still get a chance to share this idea with someone who could actually be in a position to see if it would work.... :-)
Anyway, I did a few searches on "google checkout micropayments" and found surprisingly few hits that had any information. Most stated that Google Checkout didn't offer micro-payments, most said that it wasn't ever going to happen, and only one thought that's what's next to be offered. So there are not many of us that can see the next logical step and that is Google Micropayments.
I think this will happen, because Google Checkout is in a perfect position to aggregate transactions to get the billing charges down low enough. Look for something like a Micropayment account where you can review all your charges and then get billed periodically, perhaps monthly. Merchants will get the same thing, a reporting system that allows the to track transactions on a detailed or summary level. Merchant fees will be low because the cost involved with be low. Google checkout will make it easy to buy bits and bytes with a simple login. Sales of wallpaper, icons, jokes, songs, and things we can't yet imagine will become even larger than they are now. Sites that don't sell things will have Virtual Tip Jars. Like a site? Toss a quarter in the tip jar. Want to donate to a charity easily? Slip a dollar into the tipjar. And, since you won't have to fill out a long checkout form, buying things with your handheld/phone will be easier. Wow!
This is so damn huge I can hardly stand it!
Of course, the huge potential will also draw the scammers, many of whom are smart enough to know that stealing a little from many is the low-profile way to go. Many see this as a problem that will quickly doom the concept of micropayments, but they don't know that I already have a solution... :-)
(hris
Chris Nielsen, Owner
Nielsen Technical Services
http://www.NielsenTech.com
Search Engine Optimization and Internet Consulting
"Be what they're searching for!"
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