Monday, January 29, 2007

Bill Gates in Davos: Microsoft going for the micro-payments...

See the articles in CNN, Àrstechnica, ZDnet and Planet Multimedia (in Dutch) to find out that Microsoft is heading for the micro-payment space.

Gates apparently said:
If you want to charge somebody $0.10 or $1 a month, that will just be a click…you won't have to manage some funny thing or pay some big credit charge, where half of it goes to the clearing.
By undercutting credit card fees, the Microsoft offering would enable an online newspaper to profitably charge small fees for individual articles, Gates put forth as an example.

Well, it still is a huge oil tanker this Microsoft thing, so it will take some time to steer towards the payment space. Once there however, it may sink the smaller boats....