Crypto A.M. Shines its Spotlight on SatoshiPay
The adoption of crypto blockchain payment solutions is occurring across multiple sectors. However, to date there has been no accessible and cost-effective way to transact in micro amounts, something that is particularly important in high volume low margin transactions. This has now changed.
SatoshiPay, a UK registered company run by a team of international technology and payment specialists, has developed a solution providing a frictionless global micropayment infrastructure based on blockchain technology. CEO Meinhard Benn said: “On the internet it was impossible to make payments of 1c or less. By using peer-to-peer blockchain technology, we have solved one of the longstanding problems of the commercial web: processing high volumes of low value transactions.”
These transactions have previously been commercially unfeasible primarily due to the level of fees that are paid to third parties, bad usability and high transaction costs. With existing bank infrastructure service providers charging base fees of 10-30p per transaction plus a percentage, it made it difficult for digital vendors to maintain viable micropayment business models. With SatoshiPay, the payment amounts start from as little as a fraction of a pence, enabling the company to strategically position itself to take advantage of an estimated $10bn fee market.
Benn continued: “In essence, SatoshiPay is a digital “pocket change” wallet for the web, where internet users can pay small amounts, starting from as little as 1p, for web content like articles, blog posts, music, podcasts and videos. People spend billions on micropayments in video games. We’ve created a similar user experience for the web, and this will unlock a whole new set of revenue streams starting with publishers.”
Initially targeting digital content creators, SatoshiPay allows individuals to pay for web content that they want to consume and allows publishers to monetise their digital assets in tiny increments and without friction. Thousands of online publishers have already signed up for the service, including UK’s most-read tech blog The Register. One of the backers for the company is Axel Springer, one of Europe’s biggest media houses.
SatoshiPay is supported by several major core infrastructure and service providers including blockchain provider Stellar Development Foundation and card payments company TransactWorld. Notably, as part of the partnership with Stellar, SatoshiPay has been granted to distribute 50,000,000 Stellar Lumens, currently worth more than £7m in total, as part of a series of giveaway programmes to encourage uptake of SatoshiPay by end users.
Notwithstanding SatoshiPay’s initial success in media, the company has a clear vision aimed at increasing its reach and becoming the industry standard payment infrastructure platform for micropayments. To achieve this goal, SatoshiPay is developing complementary solutions to support different sectors.
Benn summarised: “Payments for digital content are just the start. We've built a general-purpose micropayment infrastructure that will allow payments in many different industries, like the Internet of things, retail or public transport. In the future third-party developers and businesses will be able to build their own micropayment products on top of our platform.”