• Some new (Fall 1999) free email-based payment systems, including PayPal/X.com and Flooz, bill the sender's credit card or bank account, or deduct the payment from an account prepaid by check or money order. PayPal recipients may receive payment by check, or have it directly deposited to a bank account; Flooz recipients may use their payments at certain online merchants.

• 1ClickCharge consumers download a "super-thin client" (wallet) and prepay for a block of micropurchases by credit card. On December 1, 1999, 1ClickCharge announced intentions to release "post-delivery content management" methods in the 2nd quarter of 2000.

• QPass is another wallet-based system that bills the buyer's credit card for aggregated purchases, relieving merchants of some of the per-transaction burden of other credit-based online micropayment systems. The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund used QPass in November, 1999, to receive online donations.

• Trintech, a Dublin- and Silicon Valley-based company, offers NetWallet and ezCard, which aim to "provide consumers with simple and secure eCommerce payment instruments".

• Trivnet's WiSP merchant server, which does not require buyers to download a wallet, bills micropayments to the consumer's ISP account.

• iPIN also bills digital content purchases to the buyer's ISP account. In September, 1999, entered into agreements with several digital music companies to handle web-based payments for their online musical content.

• As of May, 1999, Cybercoin, the micropayment system developed by Cybercash, will no longer be available. Through partnerships with ISPs like Concentric Networks, Cybercash may be able to offer other e-commerce packages that will include micropayments.

• Millicent, a micropayment system implemented by Digital Equipment Corp, now owned by Compaq, went live in June 1999 in Japan, with wallets starting at 1000 yen and payments as small as 5 yen (approximately $0.04 at launch time).

• Clickshare is a micropayment system run by some east coast local publishers. They're currently looking for a CEO, but have a pretty neat system. You need a $1,995 server for each accepter of the micromoney.

• Digicash, one of the most promising e-cash companies, filed Chapter 11 in November 1998, and was then acquired by eCash Technologies Inc. in August of 1999.

• The Micro Payment Transfer Protocol (MPTP) (1995) has been followed by papers on Common Markup for Web Micropayment Systems (March 15, 1999)

• Intertrust was working on an encrypted envelope payment method, but they appear to have moved on to general e-commerce security solutions, such as the "Secure Digital Music Initiative" on behalf of the recording industry.

• Carnegie Mellon's NetBill, which Visa was supposedly going to employ, has been adopted by CyberCash and is currently in Alpha testing.

• The postscript paper PayWord and MicroMint lays out two simple Micropayment systems designed by Ronald L. Rivest and Adi Samir.

• IdeaMarket was an attempt to allow visitors to search a database of content and charge items to their credit card account. The company aspires to become "the World-Wide Marketplace for Intellectual Property", as soon as it launches.

• IBM now offers a micropayment wallets and servers.

• Netrights was working on Attribute, a software product designed to identify intellectual property rights on digital media, thus enhancing the attribution of IP rights, and making it 'effortless' to use those rights. Their website is currently being reorganized, but new developments may pop up.

• for a modest fee, stores the entire 'e-metals' (gold, silver, platinum, and palladium) account you purchase and allows you to conduct electronic transactions of all sizes with other account holders.

• The AuricWeb system allows ISPs to document online transactions along with other user statistics.

• CyBank adapts telephone billing models--prepaid cards and metered charges--to Internet purchases.

For More Information
We're putting on the web some articles we find particularly relevant as well as links to other economic theory on the net.

Roy Davies's Money--Past, Present, and Future and both the Money and Payment Systems page from the Institute of Finance and Banking at the University of Göttingen and the payment mechanisms designed for the internet from the Network Payment Mechanisms and Digital Cash page are fine supplemental resources.

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