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1996-06-21 - Re: Micropayments: myth?

Header Data

From: “Vladimir Z. Nuri” <vznuri@netcom.com>
To: www-buyinfo@allegra.att.com
Message Hash: 70c36b534dc465e9d351bc682c0f9a2c42a0d926fd5bdea19aac997fb3a21bc1
Message ID: <199606202143.OAA04899@netcom13.netcom.com>
Reply To: <16750.835302666@odin.nma.com>
UTC Datetime: 1996-06-21 05:54:05 UTC
Raw Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 13:54:05 +0800

Raw message

From: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 13:54:05 +0800
To: www-buyinfo@allegra.att.com
Subject: Re: Micropayments: myth?
In-Reply-To: <16750.835302666@odin.nma.com>
Message-ID: <199606202143.OAA04899@netcom13.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


a brief epistle as to the point as I can make it:

there are two money models that people are continuously conflating here:

1. I send money to someone who is selling something. they send me
that something. by definition, no billing was involved here.

2. I send a request to someone who is selling something. they send
me the something, along with a bill, which I have to pay, or possibly
decide not to. (the thing may arrive before or after the bill, 
wehther I pay, etc)

(2) is a whole class of systems in existence today, such as your cable
bill, your phone bill, etc.  much of these systems *might* be 
better implemented as (1) if/when (1) becomes available. (example,
your tv is charged micromoney, etc). but not *all* of them will be. 
(example: maybe phone companies prefer to accumulate chages and bill
at end of month. also, major "float" issues are often involved
here, although in that case not in their favor. "float" theoretically
evaporates with microcurrency)

regarding (2), it would be *possible* to have a billing system
that involved microcharges, but frankly I don't think this will
be very feasible or a wide use of the system. (1) and microcurrency
go together. (2) and microcurrency do not. is this fairly apparent
or should I give more examples?

lets say I consider hitting a web page that has a "rate" of 2c. I would not
call that a "bill". I haven't hit the page yet or requested a service.
but when I hit the page, the page says, "send me 2c". I would not 
call that a bill so much either in the classic sense-- it would be
like saying a cashier bills you when you hand them cash. well, yes,
in a strange way I guess but not really.

note that (1) presupposes that you actually have a cash type system.
systems such as credit cards whereby the payment is not necessarily
ensured, stuff like defaulting or rejecting a purchase etc. don't
fit in too well with microcurrency, in which we are talking about cash.

Thread