Solutions
Energizing Online Commerce with Micropayments
Additional Revenue Streams
Thanks to value protocols, it's now possible to exchange minimal values almost instantly with relatively low fees, a breakthrough compared to traditional payment systems.
Exploring Simple Use Cases:
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Paying 'on-the-fly' for articles with a few cents, like a local news piece, scientific article, or comparative study.
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Charge for services on a per-use basis, for instance, instead of forcing a user to subscribe to a SaaS calendar service which they find useful but are not sure if the expense is justified.
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Fundraising for small local actions.
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Anti-spam filtering for online spaces, forums, etc., thus ensuring revenues to cover some operational costs.
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Direct support to content creators (tips or paid access).
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Payments for alerts and feedback.
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Buying parts of content, like a book chapter to engage readers and encourage full purchase.
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Monetized interactions with content, such as comments, personalized responses, patronage, signing petitions, etc.
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Value-for-Value model (Value4Value): post-consumption payments based on satisfaction, a digital version of the ancient economic model of street performances.
Micropayments lower entry barriers for consumers. Instead of costly subscriptions, they can pay as they go. For creators, this means reaching a broader and more diverse audience while being fairly compensated.
Micropayments reduce barriers to entry for consumers. For creators, this means reaching a wider and more diverse audience while being compensated
Why Explore This Innovation Space?
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Decreasing consumer appetite for subscription services:
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Fatigue. Initially, subscriptions solved the 'mental transaction' - the mental load of deciding whether or not to pay for each content, offering unlimited access for a monthly fee. Today, weariness with the multiplicity and exclusivity of subscription models has shifted the mental load to the decision to subscribe.
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Entry barriers: creating an account, providing personal information, linking a payment method, legal complexities like terms of use and cancellation, etc.
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Companies adopting micropayments can reach price-sensitive customers. In an uncertain economic climate, consumers question the relevance of multiple subscriptions.
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Create an intermediate 'tier' in the business model between the free version and the expensive subscription. This allows offering premium features, generating revenue, gathering insights and metrics, and increasing the chances of retaining the customer, or even converting them to a subscription
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Consumer interest in on-the-fly payments:
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Paradoxically, a few cents' micropayment is psychologically appealing, crossing the painless threshold.
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If consumers seem accustomed to 'everything free', it's because there wasn't a way to exchange the very low amount they were willing to pay. For example, with a budget of 1 euro per day, a user could make between 15 and 30 micropayments to access various services.
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Ease of use:
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Less friction: no need to create an account and subscribe is the first requirement.
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Universal payment method: using a native internet value unit, smooth and global from day one.
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Monetizing services that are currently free:
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Due to the lack of an easy way to capture low value with current payment rails (fixed and variable cost structures, payment terminals, speed).
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Paradoxically, the higher the content quality, the more likely it is to be shared illegally, reducing paywall effectiveness. Maximizing content monetization, for instance, by applying yield management policies, is essential.
Instead of accumulating expensive subscriptions, consumers would prefer pay-as-you-go payments, provided that it's extremely seamless
Architecture
The Lightning Network, a second-layer protocol on Bitcoin, enables fast and cost-effective micropayments thanks to its decentralized network architecture, allowing almost instant transactions.
With the Lightning Network value protocol, the payment method also serves as a login (service connection), user account (persistence), and phishing prevention.
The ideal payment is a simple user click (like blinking). In reality, it's more like two clicks: the first "pay button" launches a wallet (e.g., the Alby web browser extension) and the second authorizes the payment in the wallet.
Things to consider
ROI requires:
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Low enough setup costs (MVP exploration at minimal costs).
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Critical mass of users and services.
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Communication.
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Where to find them and how?
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Without cannibalizing the existing service.
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Implementation
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Reliable and fast payment system.
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The simplest is not to manage the user wallet part:
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Otherwise, legal constraints. If the payment system is external, then you're not a payment service provider and thus not bound by ACPR regulations.
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Allows access to all existing wallet applications.
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Step-by-step with custodial and non-custodial, managing availability and redundancy.