

Buy Now, Pay Later (Maybe With Your Allowance) - chris123
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/business/07digi.html

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chris123
Very innovative. Seems like a huge opportunity.

Excerpt from the article:

Minors as well as adults can buy items in the games with a “Kwedit Promise,”
which can be paid off later in a number of ways — with a credit or debit card,
for example, or with cash sent in a mailer that Kwedit supplies.

But here’s an entirely new payment option: A user can print out a barcode and
head to a 7-Eleven store, which will accept cash, scan the code and notify
Kwedit that payment has been made. In the next three months, a Kwedit logo
will join those for credit cards and other payment methods on the doors of all
7-Elevens, a company spokesman says.

As game purveyors, Kwedit’s current partners sell virtual goods whose marginal
cost is virtually zero, so there’s no risk of real financial loss if the
promise is not repaid. But by offering Kwedit’s service, the game publishers
capitalize on the most frictionless form of sales: buy now, pay later.

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chancho
This is really a great way to keep parents out of the loop, which is great for
the kid players and the game, because if I found out my son was spending
$3/week on virtual dog food I'd turn off our internet.

