"Neil Williams" wrote in message
oups.com...
tim (back at home) wrote:
It failed for the same reason(s) that micro payments uisng mobiles
fails. The operators want 40-50p per transaction in fees and
noone is going to accept a payment method for a 30p bar of
chocolate that charges them 40p to accept.

It hasn't failed in either Germany or the Netherlands.

As you rightly say, this is because the banks recognised
the advantages to them and didn't price it at a point that
makes it unusable.

The UK banks worked to implement a system and then
found that nobody would use it because of the prices they
were looking to charge. Rather than reduce the charges
they wrote off 100 Million in development costs (OK
perhaps they sold some of what they had implemented
elsewhere)

tim


40-50p is
outrageous, mind, given that neither a credit nor a debit card
transaction for 30p would cost anything like that much to process, even
at the outrageous prices charged for such transactions at present.

While I don't know for certain, I expect the Geldkarte and Chipknip
have had so much success because both banks and retailers wanted it -
no online authorisation, and no handling of cash. It may even be one
reason why Nederlandse Spoorwegen doesn't accept credit cards.

That said, a chip-based version issued by the banks (rather than
Oyster) would have the advantage that just about every retailer of a
significant size has a terminal, as do most cashpoints, so you could
implement it more or less exclusively using software.

Neil