
Laterpay – Buy digital content, pay later - dewey
https://laterpay.net/
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patio11
This business model was previously tried by Kwedit. I was sort of disappointed
when they abandoned it, because it deprived the world of kwedit default swaps.

See:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1099811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1099811)

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jonnathanson
You made a good point about Kwedit back in the day, which I believe applies
just as well here. Namely, micropayments on the nickel-and-dime scale are
seriously challenging. How does a vendor price them effectively? How do you
get a consumer to wrap his/her head around them?

Everybody understands the value of a dollar; nobody understands the value of a
nickel. Coins, pseudocurrencies, and loyalty points seem much better suited to
overcoming that psychological barrier.

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ntaso
The concept is interesting. However, I don't think that the concept of "use
now, pay later" is really what prevents people from doing micro transactions.
The real work is to convince content providers to hide their stuff behind
cheap paywalls and use their system.

Flattr never gained enough traction and I don't see how laterpay solves this
problem.

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quarterwave
Good point, I was wondering how the link was made to the content provider.

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bananas
A digital loan shark that will only let you have €5. Sound business model
there...

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jere
>Why buy 200 coins in a game when you only need ten?

Great. Another psychological trick the F2P devs can add to their toolbox.

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Pitarou
That made me stop short, too.

When do you _ever_ "only need 10"?

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saraid216
An extra 5 moves in Farm Heroes Saga requires 9 coin thingies. I don't
remember how much that is in USD because I've never actually bought any.

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jheriko
> otherwise they will just fill up with throwaway accounts.

this is exactly the kind of strategy that 'poor' people take to maximise the
effectiveness of 'freebies' (which includes credit). i hope they have some
strategy in place to mitigate that risk...

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danbruc
Assume you want to read an article because it relevant for work. Assume your
salary is $25 per hour. If you think for just 5 seconds whether you should pay
for the article or not this will costs your employer 3.5¢. So at least in that
context a price of 5¢ or 10¢ per article should absolutely be a no-brainer.

What I have no idea is if you can sustain a business at that price - content
producer and payment provider. And I am also unsure how well that translates
to non-working time. It is at least often argued that you should value that
time just like your working time. Psychological barriers as mentioned by
others are a very different matter, too.

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mattmaroon
Content producers and techies want something like this (microtransactions) to
work so badly that they keep trying to make it happen, despite the fact that
people quite simply don't want it. They keep thinking "maybe I just need to
make it more usable" when PayPal has been quite usable for nearly two decades.

People don't want to buy a bunch of small stuff a la carte. They just don't.

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bryanlarsen
counter-example: the billions of apps sold for 99 cents on the Apple app
store.

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mattmaroon
And yet you could buy TV shows there a la carte and nobody does. Suppose maybe
I should have specified reading material though.

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bushido
The reason people don't buy TV shows is due to bad pricing and lackluster
value.

I know a lot of people who wait to buy a TV series when it comes on DVD
because they cannot understand why the sum of all episodes available for
digital download costs the same as the DVD, when there are much lower
expenses. Also they need to pay extra for any specials.

Hollywood and studios assume that people are willing to pay more for instant
access than they pay for physical products. And there in lies the problem why
very few people but TV shows a la carte.

On the people who download from p2p etc. a number of people would pay if the
amount was lower, and within this group are a number of people who download
from p2p now and buy the DVD when it has released.

This is also a big attraction for people waiting a year+ for a season to show
up on netflix.

You reasoning is unfortunately an ad homeinem.

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saurik
> I know a lot of people who wait to buy a TV series when it comes on DVD
> because they cannot understand why the sum of all episodes available for
> digital download costs the same as the DVD, when there are much lower
> expenses.

This sounds like an education problem: how do we make people understand that
the cost of printing DVDs is negligible (in fact, practically nothing) in
comparison to the efforts of hundreds if not thousands of trained individuals,
tens of millions of dollars of specialized equipment, and the limited
availability of their favorite actors?

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bushido
To my knowledge the perceived expenses with DVD comes from the costs consumers
think that comes from packaging, warehousing and sales.

To be honest I completely agree that this is not substantial and should not
affect the costs and margins for the studios.

There is definitely an education problem, but the bigger issue is the
consumption problem, that is, people who are willing and able to pay for
digital downloads of TV shows are prepared to wait a few months - a year to
buy a DVD or watch it on Netflix.

Sure we could try and educate these people about the minuscule difference in
price. But chances are we would still fail to increase the perceived value.

And there in lies the problem and an opportunity to find a better delivery
system.

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carlio
As a publisher, I'd question when I'd actualy get money for the content I
sold, if I have to wait for every "customer" to accumulate €5 before they
forked over cash. Until LaterPay has significant market penetration, the
likelyhood is that small publishers will never see any revenue.

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PanMan
Sounds similar to tipit.to which friends of mine did. Unfortunately, like a
lot of money transferring services, they ran into a lot of fraud. Any money ->
something -> money service online makes it really attractive to launder stolen
credit cards.

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mobiuscog
"no upfront registration" is a misnomer, as you will obviously have to sign-up
in order to partake of the service.

I would assume you will also have to register a payment method, otherwise they
will just fill up with throwaway accounts.

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dewey
According to this german blog post (It's an interview with a famous german
blogger/tv presenter who is working for Laterpay in a consulting position) [0]
you don't have to sign up to use it at the beginning. You basically just say
"I want to pay for this later" and once you are hitting the 5 euro mark it'll
prompt you to sign up and pay for it.

[0] [http://meedia.de/2014/03/21/richard-gutjahr-ueber-
laterpay-p...](http://meedia.de/2014/03/21/richard-gutjahr-ueber-laterpay-
paid-content-nach-dem-bierdeckel-prinzip/)

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ycaspirant
I'm having a hard time understanding what I can use this service for. Can
somebody please provide one or two concrete examples of potential use cases?
Thanks very much in advance!

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KhalPanda
I like how the login/sign-up button click boxes conform nicely to the central
circular 'or' area.

...but that's about it.

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NoodleIncident
Quite clever. The white border on the circle is pixel-perfectly tuned to match
the white margin between the buttons.

...sounds like hell to fix for IE. Glad I don't do css.

They also have a .call-to-action class for that green color, which is cute.

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bachback
missed the bitcoin train.

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dewey
I don't really see the connection between Bitcoin and Micro-Payment services
at all. Bitcoin is hardly easy and instant unlike Flattr (Although I'd say
Flattr isn't really that easy and straightforward as their intro video wants
people to believe) and this service.

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mareofnight
Dogecoin managed to be pretty easy, though. (I've never used bitcoin, so I
don't know how much difference there is.)

