Peppercoin Sold... And Almost No One Notices

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

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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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 17 Apr 2007 @ 8:47am

    who?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    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?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 17 Apr 2007 @ 10:04am

    Never heard of em

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Paul, 17 Apr 2007 @ 11:10am

    dot dot dot

    Leave it to Mike to mention what is not worth mentioning.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. identicon
    just me, 17 Apr 2007 @ 7:54pm

    Yawn Did I miss something? apparently not!

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. identicon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    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.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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