ABSTRACT
Micropayments involve a tiny amount of money, typically between 10¢ and $10, and are uneconomical to process with typical noncash systems. However, if the cost per transaction is made commensurate with the small values processed, micropayments have the potential of replacing cash to pay for daily items such as parking fees or transportation tickets, and also virtual goods such as streaming services, ringtones, online games, or digital music. Telephone companies have long tracked usage using the number of impulses per second, and the telephone tick could have been used to track micropayments (Pedersen, 1996). In any event, micropayments were first used to replace cash to pay for calls from public telephone booths. Today, online micropayments are also imbedded in mobile phones or can use cloud-based virtual purses.
