{"id":9374,"date":"2020-07-23T11:14:22","date_gmt":"2020-07-23T10:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/?p=9374"},"modified":"2020-07-23T11:14:23","modified_gmt":"2020-07-23T10:14:23","slug":"micropayments-and-transaction-fees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.adambowie.com\/blog\/2020\/07\/micropayments-and-transaction-fees\/","title":{"rendered":"Micropayments and Transaction Fees"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yesterday I wrote about my frustration<\/a> that every news outlet that doesn’t want to – or more likely can’t<\/em> – rely on advertising alone, wants to push me down a subscription route. I said that I am basically maxed out as far as news subscriptions go right now. I’d like a pay-as-you-go offering, much as I do if I fancy buying a copy of the FT at the weekend, or a once-in-a-while Sunday Times (then I remember that Rod Liddle still writes for them, and that puts me off for a while).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I Tweeted a link, the folk at Axate<\/a> wrote to alert me to their service which does much of what I’d like. Indeed a couple of people on Twitter also mentioned them, highlighting the fact that Popbitch uses them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea is simple. You have an Axate Wallet, and load it up with some money – the minimum is \u00a33. Then when you reach a site that accepts them, you can pay a small fee (or voluntary tip) via your wallet to the news provider directly. You can set your wallet to auto top-up so that there’s always some money in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t know what they’re charging the sites – but let’s assume it’s somewhere around 30%. Sites probably also need to do a bit of dev work to integrate Axate’s payment system into their paywall. But that’s it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only real issue is that it’s still early days for Axate and they only have a few local UK publishers and a couple of magazines on board, alongside the aforementioned Popbitch. I do wish them well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But why do you have to even create a wallet and put as little as \u00a33 in it to begin with? The answer is card transaction charges – where a variety of banks and financial group charge a retailer (or news provider, or anyone charging for their products or services) for the privilege of collecting customer revenues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, even handling cash has a cost. Try paying in bags and bags of loose change into your local bank branch and see what they say. There’s also the time cost for an employee to travel to a branch to pay in cash, or to pay a security company to come and collect it. So cash isn’t completely free. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When transactions are digital, there are still middlemen to pay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will begin by noting that my local independent convenience store has a sign on their new plexiglass screen at the cash desk informing customers that the minimum card transaction is \u00a32. They’ve worked out that taking card payments below that price costs them money. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But how much does a transaction cost? I’m not an expert, but some Google searches basically broke things down like this for the UK:<\/p>\n\n\n\n