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Comment by saagarjha | Hacker News Reader

I think this is just the same problem of micropayments on the web: nobody’s “solved” it, so free is just the most convenient option by far.

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https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/08/the_amazon_flex...

Amazon had a service that was built mainly with micropayments in mind. It never took off.

"Amazon FPS’s aggregation feature lets developers track and aggregate micro-payments into a single payment transaction, saving on transaction processing costs and avoiding having to build complex ledger functionality into their own applications. Using the aggregation functionality coupled with the lower Amazon FPS fees, developers can now pursue micro-payments businesses that previously have been cost-prohibitive."

Edit: Better Source and a quote

In india we have UPI, we can pay as small as we want.

Not true, app stores solved it ...

Not micro in the sense of penny transactions.

They don't lump together small in-app payments, so you get billed only larger amounts?

Kinda/sorta/not really. It's why "free to play"/in-app-purchases rather than up-front-buying is such a big (and annoying) trend.

Don't they skim like 30% or something crazy like that off the top of every purchase? If so, I wouldn't call it "solved".

When you consider the infrastructure provided for hosting, payment processing, distribution, and the storefront itself, 30% is not unreasonable.

That 30% is on more than $60B/yr for apple. Are you suggesting that their overhead for running app store is anywhere within even a couple orders of magnitude of $20B/yr?

I'm suggesting that, compared to what you'd pay to do these things for yourself, 30% is a steal. There's a reason people are ok with paying it.

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