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A comment on The Economist’s digital strategy and the limits of a model based on advertising. Parent comment

Re:The Economist’s digital strategy and the limits of a mode... by tsotha on Thursday April 02, 2015 @12:38AM (#9308701)
>With micro-payments, you can't deal in actual currency. You have to move around some kind of "Credits" that at some point get exchanged back to currency in bulk to a payment processor, otherwise the transaction fees are greater than the payments themselves.

Which prompts me to wonder why transaction fees are so high.

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Re:The Economist’s digital strategy and the limits of a mode... by tomjen3 on Thursday April 02, 2015 @03:35AM (#9309129)
Because they are a cartel. It the marginal price for a transaction is pretty close to zero, so the fact that the price is noticable means that credit card transaction are not operating in an efficient market.
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Re:The Economist’s digital strategy and the limits of a mode... by tsotha on Thursday April 02, 2015 @04:21AM (#9309269)
Just because the marginal price is near zero doesn't mean you're not going to pay a lot. The marginal price for software is near zero as well. You may be right about it being a cartel, but the marginal price doesn't tell you much.
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Re:The Economist’s digital strategy and the limits of a mode... by KFW504 on Thursday April 02, 2015 @12:51AM (#9308740)
well, they aren't exactly priced on a cost basis
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