Micro Payments or Alternative Billing methods
 

borrowing this from you KRL, good topic.

As an alternative option. Someone could create an adult industry currency, middle level between the VISA systems and merchants. Refunds if necessary could be in the form of this currency and eliminate actual funds being deducted and processing fees accumulating. Free credits in the form of this currency could be generously given to persuade customers from chargebacks. These credits would be more attractive if the industry accepts this model on a wider scale and they can be used in several places. People might be more likely to spend more of this "fake" currency. Could still use a recurring model and deposit the currency into members accounts like cell phone minutes.

There are some posts on this that were pretty interesting but since the search feature isn't working, can't locate them.

Or then.. maybe not. :glugglug

i like micropayment idea. but it has to be very widespread in order to obtain a big profit.

but for a paysite.. what matters to them are the rebills.. thats the sweetest thing there is.

sms/dialers/duocash.com

it is hard though...micropayments aren't of any use until there is less free stuff available...

So things will have to consolidate further imho.

you want micropayments? sms, the next big thing in processing...just waiting for it to hit the U.S.

any big sites doing sms billing, anywhere ?

sms won't work in the U.S. yet as a viable payment solution but if you wait till it hits the U.S. it will be good.....
there are a few u.s. companies picking up on SMS...but it's to target europe, japan, etc....
if you don't know the way sms works, what happens is the user enters a code in their cell phone to get access to the specific service or content and they get charged a one time premium rate on their cell phone bill. this is widely accepted in europe and some other countries and in my opinion is the future for U.S also.

We use SMS billing for a specific chat solution but an issue most of you won't be aware of is the *HUGE* chunk of rev the telco's take out'a the bill, in CC processing we're all use to 10% - 16% fee's, in SMS u gotta get use to 50% - 60% odd telco fee's *then* a few points for the gateway ... so yes it's a great solution but the margin's are very different!

agreed...forgot to mention that...hopefully it will get trimmed down as the technology becomes more mainstream and matures

I don't know if that'll happen, at least here in AU the service is called Premium Rate SMS and because it's primarily used by dating, adult, horoscope type services the telco's know they can keep the fee's high and there's not alot we can do, it's treated like the old 1900 type number.

Also for those that don't know not every mobile phone can participate in a Premium Rate SMS exchange, because of the users call plan or the network their on, and at least in AU no pre-paid phones can use the services. So not only are the fee's high but as a thumbnail you can only access some small percentage of the available market ...

that's one big problem with U.S. carriers...they have so much different technologies running the cellphone networks...CDMA, GSM, etc......europe and most other countries have standardized...i think that in the future one type of technology will become dominant globally as the industry matures, cutting costs down.

I found a web site using some kind of micropayment for their videos : http://www.xsurprise.com , they use a codec call HDV
from their web site there is some kind of interactive menu