Simon Willison’s Weblog

Cashets

29th October 2002

Roll on the micropayment revolution! Cashets are designed specifically for the small purchases—$1 (or less)—that you ordinarily can’t make on the Internet because sellers have a minimum. The smallest amount you can charge using the system is 2 cents, of which 1 cent will go to Cashets and 1 cent will go to you, the seller. The 1 cent is a flat rate for sales up the a dollar, then it’s 2 cents for sales up to 2 dollars and so on up the maxiumum charge of 5 dollars. The company is owned by MasterCard founder Michael Phillips and two unnamed partners who are “computer professionals”. The site is atrocious (the text on the front page is a big gif with no alt text ffs) but the business model looks like it could just be the thing small-to-medium web sites have been waiting for.