Peppercoin has released the next version of its small (but not quite ‘micro’) payment system. Peppercoin 2.0 promises smaller per-transaction fees, no required user signup, per-use and subscription models, and easy payment through credit and debit cards.
The press release offers a general view of their cost, “Peppercoin’s fees are typically 10 cents or less for a 99-cent transaction, which is more than 70 percent less than the typical card not present processing fee,” but does not go deeper into specifics.
According to this press release, Peppercoin would no longer require a downloaded toolbar/program for the customer. Instead, the only page the customer would have to worry about is filling out the card info on the merchant’s site, itself, effectively making this an “invisible” application — has anyone alerted Scott McCould, yet?
Although not mentioned, I can guess some of these choices (no user sign-up, no pre-payment into the system) might be due to competition from BitPass, which still requires both of these.
It may or may not be a direct reaction to BitPass, but in my mind, it’s just the simplest way to do business. When you go to a store and want to pay with a credit card, they don’t make you fill out this application and place $5 in escrow. That just makes it more inconvenient when all you’re trying to do is collect money.