Australia: Nanotransactions plans to implement nationwide micro-content payment system

The system is the project of ABC technology journalist, Nick Ross. He is seeking funding to move into the final development phase. Ross informs that his project aims at erasing the problems publishers have when they have internet users pay for small amounts of content. As such, visiting readers will be asked for a small amount of money to access the content they want on a pay-per-view basis, without the need for subscriptions.

Ross says Nanotransactions will initially be used by online news site publishers, bloggers and freelance writers, but will rapidly broaden its reach to video and audio streaming websites and musicians.

Nanotransactions is currently being developed by Vivant, the company which created CommBank’s Kaching banking app and its Property Guide app.

Nanotransactions will also enable customers to republish other people’s content and have all parties get paid.
Also, publishers can commission specialist or high-profile writers to create original content for them without spending money from their freelance budgets – the Nanotransactions payments automatically get split between the publisher and the writer’s accounts.

While Nanotransactions is initially targeting publishers, it has considerable potential in a range of other markets including musicians who can charge ‘per play’ of their music while fans can republish songs on their own websites and all parties get paid, video and audio streaming websites which can charge by the minute without taking care of rental expiries or paying to ‘watch the whole thing again’ and blogging communities and contributed content websites (and everyone else) which can use the same account to pay for content that they do to receive money for content.