I hope your investors didn't pay by tipping you, or you'll only get about $200k :)

I should also stress that for merchant support we'll allow you to mandate payment before accessing the content. Whatever way people want to sell their goods, we'll support it.

We think that because things are digital, non-payment doesn't really matter. Digital media creators are always trying to enhance and connect to their 'tribe'. Putting a paywall in between your fans and your content turns them away. Very often it turns them to "piracy".

Do you recall The Pirate Bay's policy on mandating payment? :-P

And how much are people required to pay to read your blog?

I was just teasing you, I like the way you have it set up. I have a feeling it will lead to a higher total paid tip amount than requiring the credit card right away.

I don't know what you mean about the Pirate Bay though.

ha! The good thing about moving to general purpose payments is that you can incent people to pay by removing the content if they don't. Free content stays free. So to carry the analogy, investors would lose the shares if they didn't pay.

I really wish people would upvote the article linking to their actual blog.

(Oh, and congrats :))

Nice! I'll be curious to see where this goes. It's a tough sector because of a lot of human factors (legal, micropayment issues), rather than necessarily technology. But if they make it work... it will be very interesting in a lot of ways.

Seriously. I have a feeling a lot of the money will go to figuring out a way to lower the cut the payment processors take.

That's easy: use checking accounts. They are essentially free. That's why PayPal pushes their users towards them. Credit cards are the expensive ones.

But the most effective way to reduce the percentage overhead is to make the transaction bigger. That's why Tipjoy's aggregation of payments is good: pay $1 in 100 different places, and your overhead for a credit card will be around 2.5% vs. 20% for a single $1 transaction.

You can also negotiate to lower the overhead, and to my knowledge, that takes large usage more than it takes money. iTunes for example has 65M credit cards. They do whatever they want.

Well, clearly you have figured it all out :)

It will be interesting to see what kind of new services will now come online as micropayments become more available.

Congrats Ivan and Abby!

Long live micropayments! C'grats Ivan and team!

You know, it's surprising that banks have never entered this arena seriously.

It's hard to innovate in regulated industries. Nothing is more regulated than money and banking.

Sure, but they are theoretically in more of a position to do so then anyone else (paypal, tipjoy, etc). They have the size to deal with it & they have the ability/experience to lobby Governments.

They also already have their fairly usable online banking systems which would make a good base.

Have you ever talked to anyone who worked at a bank? They aren't exactly out for innovation.

Leveraging yourself 30:1 to buy collateralized debt obligations doesn't count as innovation?

I do agree that there is a great deal of innovation on the high end. You should look into the automated traders they are making these days. Consumer facing services, not so much.

Banks barely get by as it is right now from a technology standpoint.

The struggle just to provide enough of the basic online banking services to their users. There is a continual stream of new features and products they support (with daily banking being a small part of that).

I have worked on a lot of banking software - and there is absolutely no chance those institutions would be able to compete in this space. They don't want to, they don't need to, and they don't know how to.

Making billions through overdraft fees is the way they innovate. Less work, less risk, and they have no soul anyway.

Maybe it's because the banks know all the legislations they have to fullfill when offering such a service (money laundring, etc...)

Big ups to the Kirigins.

Congrats guys!

Remind me - who else in our round got funded?

well done guys. what is $1million going to be spent on?

I'd assume lots to be spent on legal paperwork to enable people to withdraw money?

Well, I know the first thing I would buy would be a monocle.

A monocle behind my glasses would be too rich

Wow. Congratulations guys!

Congratulations, guys.

Way to go Tipjoy!

Congrats guys!

Great news

Congrats.