Re: ★★ ATB Coin - the world’s fastest and most secure cryptocurrency ★★
Micropayments: Prepay and Postpay Models
Micropayments are defined as small online transactions. There are 3 models of such payments. Pay-as-you-go is considered to be a classic. There is also prepay and postpay models that have been created in order to solve the issues of the abovementioned model. Lets have a look at the last two.
Prepay
Customers are charged by merchants for a certain amount during a certain period of time. Those charges are transformed in a virtual currency that can then be used to purchase products from this merchant online. Customers can also purchase gift cards. Prepay method is often used to pay for newspapers, magazines, movies or games subscription monthly/yearly.
Pros and cons:
+ if you pay a large amount in advance in a single transaction the fee will be less rather than making payments every certain period.
+ with physical gift card users can choose how to pay if they dont have credit or debit cards to use online
a merchant should have a tracking system to monitor the amount that customer has on its hands
if gift cards are available in brick and mortar stores, merchants must pay to distribute them
users pay up front for access to everything whether they want it or not
Impulse buying is not preserved
Postpay
Postpay model has a lot in common with a traditional online shopping users pay after they decide to make a purchase. Merchant tracks users individual microtransactions, aggregate purchases and bill them as one amount. Postpay can also be used for the subscription.
Pros and cons:
+ users dont need to make a large transaction to purchase products
+ aggregated payments usually reduce transaction fees
+ impulse buying is preserved
a merchant should have a system to track users purchases and aggregate them
users may only buy one product and dont get back to the store anymore
customers can only purchase products with credit or debit cards online