A Networked World: Embedding the payment option

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July 28, 2009

Embedding the payment option

One of the challenges of Micropayments has always been that the transaction costs quickly exceed the transaction value, and that makes great sense for the transaction processor and is totally stupid for everyone else. I've never understood why Telcos, which have solved the micropayment problem years ago didn't put their transaction management services online for everyone and make a bundle.

Well, actually, that's not true, I know why they didn't, it meant losing control of the thing that mattered most to them, the services on the network. As soon as they encourage others to use their payments systems they implicitly encourage others to create services that the Telcos don't own and THAT was anathema.

So, once again, they get trumped. PayPal’s New ‘Open’ Payment Platform Gets Microsoft’s Endorsement

PayPal has ... it’s got its eyes on the newly booming apps and cloud computing market.

The eBay-owned company is opening up its platform to third-party developers this fall, so that everyone from individual app-makers, to social gaming companies and software startups will be able to plug global payment options into their applications from the start.

That means users in different countries, with different currencies, and even on different devices (including mobile phones and set-top boxes) will be able to start paying for apps and services as quickly and securely as they’re used to doing on the desktop.

And during the kickoff of a developer training session for the new “PayPal X” platform, it got an endorsement from arguably one of the most powerful companies in software development today: Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), which announced that it will be supporting PayPal X in its own cloud-computing platform, Windows Azure.

If they can enable us all to embed a payment option such as 'flick earl 20c for an interesting post" or "that YouTube video was worth 10c" and if they can make it simple enough for bunnies like me to USE, they will be on to something really interesting.
Video version