Peppercoin Raises $4 Million in First Round Funding, Appoints CEO

[Dirk-Willem van Gulik]

On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, R. A. Hettinga wrote:

> On Tuesday, September 23, 2003, at 03:45  PM, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
>
> > Rivest and Micali's microcheque protocol gets a ducat-download.
> >
> > Next stop an IPO -- and then an eBay buyout... ;-).
>
> Hahaha... "about 7 percent per transaction" - NOT mentioned on the
> website anywhere, I had to look in a Wired article - we call that an
> "F*** the merchant" rate folks, even AMEX isn't that high.

Actually - for amounths under 5 euro (or there about) generally a minum
fee between 0.15 and 0.35 euro kicks in. And it is not uncommon to see
rates of 10% to 15% if your transactions are consistently in the 5-15 euro
range.  So that makes 7% of the transaction regardless of size actually a
very good deal for an interesting part of the marked which is badly served
by the current US style credit card / merchant approach. Add to this
possibly different cost recovery priorities in case of fraud and it
certainly may be able to find a place to survive.

> Windows only. Interface software is NOT open source.

It'll serve roughly 80% of the marked, add Mac and you hit your 99% of the
desktops. More varied/important may be the server side - and I'd be
prepared to bet that any platform is supported when the volume is high
enough - down to VAX/VMS :-)

> Oh, and they are used by 6 merchants.

Personaly I am quite impressed by a company which in this stage of their
cycle has that many almost real customers.

> VISA is soooooo scared, oooooooooooo.

:-) though I doubt that this is anyones intention - and I'd worry more
about VISA taking an interest and buying the bits they need and shelving
the parts we'd think are cool.

Dw

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