Would anyone but the sort of person who reads sites like HN go for that? It seems like you would need a lot of training and a lot of trust (or wait for a new generation of humans to grow up) for that to take any mainstream hold, without SOME initial gateway. I mean, even if there were some sort of central PayPal-type system, you'd have to login or click "enable" at least once on any new site. "Enable paying for stuff. [x]"
A truly gateless ("zero click?") system which would just start charging your card the moment you landed on a page would obviously alleviate that issue, but that would imply a (probably currently impossible) amount of trust in content providers.
All that aside, I'm still not wholly convinced the numbers will work out for microtransactions at that low a cost even if people would go for it. I'm glad people are having the discussions, because obviously people need to continue to crack how to make money off of content that isn't a commercial song, TV show, or piece of software, but I'm wary of this particular proposal.
I wouldn't mind enabling paying for sites I used a lot.
Providing people with a record of the charges and an easy dispute mechanism both sides could trust would alleviate some of the trust issues with the content providers. Content providers who got dinged too often could be banned from using the service.
A truly gateless ("zero click?") system which would just start charging your card the moment you landed on a page would obviously alleviate that issue, but that would imply a (probably currently impossible) amount of trust in content providers.
All that aside, I'm still not wholly convinced the numbers will work out for microtransactions at that low a cost even if people would go for it. I'm glad people are having the discussions, because obviously people need to continue to crack how to make money off of content that isn't a commercial song, TV show, or piece of software, but I'm wary of this particular proposal.