Re: microcurrency: Netscape vs. Microsoft

[Alan <alano@teleport.com>]

On Sat, 18 Jan 1997, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote:

> it seems that microcurrency has still not hit the "big time"
> yet. or perhaps some people see otherwise. what is the evidence
> for how far it has penetrated ala DigiCash etc? I haven't seen
> much myself.
> 
> I predict that microcurrency will not catch on in a big way
> until it is integrated with browsers, and when it is, it
> will be adopted in an insanely large rush like the way
> the web itself caught on with the GUI (and was mostly comatose
> before it).  

It will also not catch on until there are better standards involving
microcurrency transactions amongst the vendors.  It would also help if
there was a single interface (or "helper app") for whatever vendor you
decided to go with.

Currently every vendor of payment schemes has made it proprietary in some
way.  (At least the ones I have seen.)  This means that if the user visits
three different web pages, each using a payment scheme from a different
vendor, that user has to be signed up with all of those vendors.  (Or at
least have their helper apps.)

I will not even go into the hastles of trying to set it up from the server
side.  (The last payment scheme I installed (cybercash) was not very well
documented.  The documentation on the web site contradicted the software
with the tar file.  (And both were wrong at some point.))  Until these
payment schemes are easier to deal with for the web page provider, they
will not catch on.  (There will also need to be more support for Internet
service providers with multiple vendors all on different payment schemes.)

Until there is a single standard hammered out, micropayments will still be
few and far between.