PayPal to Offer Micropayment Service

PayPal may release a micropayment service before th year ends if reports are accurate. President Scott Thompson is said to have indicated as much.

The move would make too much sense not to come sooner or later, and sooner would no doubt be in PayPal’s best interest. Not only are social games among the biggest trends of the web, but news organizations are still experimenting with ways to drive revenues, and micropayments are not out of the question for some.

Given PayPal’s track record as the go-to online payment service, getting a micropayment service up and running seems like it should be a key initiative.

PayPal It has already been an interesting year for PayPal, with a great deal of emphasis on mobile endeavors. Recently, the company extended the bump technology of its iPhone app to Android, and its PayPal X Platform has opened up a lot of opportunities for third-party developers. In June, it launched a Guest Payments feature, allowing credit card acceptance within apps.

Micropayments, particularly through mobile channels are bound to become much more in demand with the rise of virtual gifts, online news experiments, tablets, and mobile use in general.

There are 8 Comments. Add Yours.

car check uk
August 15, 2010 at 8:43 am

It will be interesting to see the costs for taking micropayments and who will be able to use it. What will be classed as a micropayment?
L.A.Ansoms
August 15, 2010 at 11:43 am

As far as I’m aware, Paypal is already accepting micropayments for years, although they’re not promoting it.
View: https://www.paypalobjects.com/IntegrationCenter/ic_micropayments.html
Anant
August 15, 2010 at 11:50 am

It’s Really Interesting News, let’s see the Paypal Micropayment Service in December. Hope, it would be more convenient.
Roger Pilon
August 15, 2010 at 12:11 pm

As it is now, the micro payments were and are available only to USA and Canada. If they want to go global then they will have to open the gate of micro payments worldwide!

Will they do that?

That is the question!

Roger Pilon, Editor
The Planet Fixer
yichen
August 15, 2010 at 9:46 pm

Paypal is a global payment, and now more and more people use it, trust it, its function will continue to improve.
VideoSeconds
August 16, 2010 at 1:44 am

We have been taking micropayments for over 4 years through PayPal. The fees are easy and it is cost effective up to 10 dollars. Five cents transaction charge and 5 percent of sales brings the cost to 10 cents on the dollar. Since VideoSeconds uses this primarily for digital music and video downloads it works really well. The Micropayments at Paypal allow more money to pay out as royalties.

After 10 dollars, say a sale of rare concert DVD’s or special videos, it becomes more expensive. Perhaps they will allow 15 dollar or 20 dollar micropayments with sliding scale charges on total amount?
Philip Cohen
August 16, 2010 at 6:34 pm

Draft Media Release re PayPal
Micropayments for online content
September 26, 2010 at 6:01 pm

Thats the good news for online content sellers. I heard Google was also starting such service last year. Is it rolled out?

Sam