Peppercoin Sold... And Almost No One Notices

from the so-much-for-that-plan dept

Tue, Apr 17th 2007 8:17am — Mike Masnick

It's no secret that we're not believers in the concept of micropayments as a solution to selling content on the web. There are just too many problems with them. First of all, micropayments are often used on content that probably should be offered for free. Second, they add mental transaction fees that actually increase the real cost of the good while decreasing the value. Over the years, though, the press never seems to miss a chance to hype up the next big micropayment company, and Peppercoin was one of the biggest. It received a ton of press, with many predicting that its micropayment solution would become the way a tremendous amount of content would be offered online. Of course, that never happened. The company struggled and kept searching for a business model that would actually work. The latest is that Peppercoin has been bought by a company that sells "customer loyalty marketing programs" for an undisclosed sum -- and the press that hyped up the company as the savior of online content five years ago seems to have decided it's not even worth mentioning.

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8 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 17 Apr 2007 @ 8:47am

who?
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Wyatt, 17 Apr 2007 @ 9:21am

Umm
"and the press that hyped up the company as the savior of online content five years ago seems to have decided it's not even worth mentioning."

Obviously this company is not worth mentioning. Who the hell are they?
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Apr 2007 @ 10:04am

Never heard of em
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Astrid, 17 Apr 2007 @ 10:08am

Pepper who?
Paypal had already established itself as the standard for online payments by the time these also-rans came up. If I recall, the essence of micropayments was that they would bill Mastercard/VISA in lump sums, making a profit by rounding off, instead of billing in millions of micropayment increments i.e., when someone buys online content for .10 cents.

The micropayment companies said we're better than Paypal because we wait until we have a million .10 cent transactions, and then we put it through Mastercard/VISA as one large transaction. I'm no economist, but the concept didn't make sense even then.

And I have to admit, I don't recall this company Peppercoin's name at all. What I remember is the concept of online micropayments, not this specific company.
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Paul, 17 Apr 2007 @ 11:10am

dot dot dot
Leave it to Mike to mention what is not worth mentioning.
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just me, 17 Apr 2007 @ 7:54pm

Yawn Did I miss something? apparently not!
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Neil, 18 Apr 2007 @ 3:44am

um...micropayments are already pretty huge on the net (by micropayement I mean 1 USD or less).

If you can't already see MP's in action then you're not in the loop.
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Alan, 16 Dec 2007 @ 11:24pm

Micro payments
Micro payment is alive and well. Be on the look out for ZipZap, a soon to be launched true alternative payment system not a "wrapper" like PayPal, Google Checkout, Amazon FPS or Peppercoin which simply "wrap" their service around major credit card companies instead of providing a real alternative.
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