Federated Payment Services

This is something that's probably already been thought of. I think we're probably already moving in this direction...

One of the reasons the Apple App Store is so successful is the ease of which you can make micro-payments. Once you set up your billing info once, you can buy apps quickly. If the app's only a buck or two, it's easy to buy the ones you like. The seller can sell the app to a couple millions users and make some real money.

Other phones, like the Google Phone, and sites like Scrib are mimicking this model with their own micro-payment sites. They're all good ideas, and I think the micro-payment concept can be extended to a lot of products.

But, having many different micro-payment sites means having to trust each site with your credit card, and to take the time to fill in the information. If it's just for a magazine or a spur-of-the-moment purchase, I probably won't bother. Without there being a critical mass of products I'd like to purchase on any particular site, there's no point to signing up.

That's why I think it's important to federate the micro-payment services. Let me choose any particular payment service; paypal, google, authorize.net, amazon, visa, mastercard, whoever. When I go to Scribd/Google's Market/Apple's App Store, have it log me in automatically. Let PayPal/Google/Amex/Whoever take it's 2.whatever percent, Scribd take 10% and the rest go to the author. Have me sign up once and never bother me again.

Then, I'd be happy to blow $5/day downloading my newpaper, KenKen, weekly gossip rag and every Larry Niven book they'll sell me.

Case in point. I love the New York Times, but I won't sign up for their service. It's $50/year, which is too much for me to pay for a newspaper. And, I don't want to have to sign up with another e-commerce server. However, I'd happily pay 50c every weekday to download it to my Google Phone, if it was easy and secure. 260 weekdays == $140, $123 bucks of which goes to NYTimes.