Is there big money to be made on tiny purchases? Several industry leaders believe there is. And four of the world's leading micropayment experts will be on hand to discuss this issue at the DaVinci Institute's upcoming Future of Money Summit (www.futureofmoneysummit.com) on October 27-29, 2003.
Speakers will include Dr. Ron Rivest, MIT inventor of RSA encryption and co-founder of Peppercoin; Kurt Huang, Stanford PhD candidate, CEO and co-founder of BitPass; Todd Pearson, Managing Director of Merchant Services for PayPal; and Margaret Reid, VP of Emerging Consumer Environments at Visa International. A discussion panel on the topic will be moderated by Ari Weinberg, staff editor at Forbes.com.
"The need is great on the part of sellers to be able to charge small amounts for their music, or shareware software, or just about anything you want to click on," said Kurt Huang, co-founder of BitPass, a startup based in Palo Alto, California, that is beta-testing a payment system for purchases as low as a penny.
"We've taken a look at this space and believe this new technology will spin off some rather inventive new businesses," says Thomas Frey, Executive Director of the DaVinci Institute. "While most have broken this down into the basic categories of selling music and information, the possibilities are far more interesting than that."
Some of the products that Frey sees fitting into the micro marketplace include fonts, clip art, sheet music, ring tones (for your cell phone), postage, PowerPoint backgrounds, and photos. Some of the younger geeks will be drawn to things like avatars, weapons (upgrades for the X-Box or PlayStation 2), new skins and style packs (for software programs), and eventually new voice modules for the next generation conversationalist computers.
"Two of the more unique products we've discussed are micro insurance policies and pay-to-send email addresses," says Frey.
Micro insurance policies could accompany purchases made on eBay, as example, or insure your cell phones, PDAs, or the hard drive on your computer.
Frey explains the idea of the pay-to-send email address this way.
"If you were to set up a special email address that charged people $1 for every email that they send you, you would probably pay close attention to every one that came through. For many of the famous people they need a way to screen out the junk, so a price tag ranging from $.05 to $25 may make sense."
Sponsored by GartnerG2 and Forbes Magazine, the Future of Money Summit blends historical events with current trends and makes forecasts about the world of money to come. The event will be held October 27-29th at the Omni Interlocken Hotel in Colorado and will feature 70 of the world's thought leaders in the changing world of money including Futurist John Naisbitt; Sue Gordon-Lathrop, VP Visa; John Gage, Chief Scientist, Sun Microsystems; Susan Landry, VP Gartner|G2; Tachi Kiuchi, former CEO of Mitsubishi Electric; James Van Dyke, CEO of Javelin Strategy; and many more. (www.futureofmoneysummit.com)
Bios and Contact Information:
For information or interviews, contact:
Dr. Ron Rivest, MIT inventor of RSA encryption and co-founder of Peppercoin. Professor Rivest is the Viterbi Professor of Computer Science in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is a member of MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science, a member of the lab's Theory of Computation Group and is a leader of its Cryptography and Information Security Group. He is also a founder of RSA Data Security. Contact: 617-253-5880 or rivest@mit.edu
Kurt Huang, BitPass CEO, co-founded the company in late 2002, and is the architect of the companyfs micropayment technology. He has emerged as a leader in articulating the rationale for the re-emergence of micropayment technologies and services. Kurt believes passionately that online communities and individuals must be able to offer content and services to the widest possible audience at the lowest possible cost for both buyer and seller. He predicts that eliminating existing cost and convenience barriers to micropayments will unleash a torrent of creative output and pent-up demand for online content and services. Contact: 650-354-1889 or kurt@bitpass.com
Todd Pearson is the Managing Director of Merchant Services for PayPal, Inc., an eBay company. He joined PayPal in January of 2000 and is currently general manager for the Merchant Services business unit. Merchant Services is responsible for PayPalfs U.S. merchants and service providers who sell outside of eBay. Prior to taking over this role in January 2003 Mr. Pearson was responsible for managing the relationships with banking, processing and other partners that connect PayPal to the external payments networks for bringing funds into and taking funds out of the PayPal system. Previous to PayPal, Mr. Pearson worked as a strategy consultant at Accenture. Contact through Amanda Pires at 650-864-8067 or apires@paypal.com
Margaret Reid, Vice President, Emerging Consumer Environments at Visa International, leads a team that is responsible for consumer product development, focusing on new solutions that will enhance or extend Visafs payment platforms. Specifically, Margaret’fs team has played an integral part in the development of payment solutions using contactless technologies, such as infrared and Bluetooth, at the physical point-of-sale and new transactions that enable payments to be sent to a Visa account. Contact through Sabine Middlemass P (650) 432-8307 „ C (650) 533-4106 or SMiddlem@visa.com
Thomas Frey, Executive Director, DaVinci Institute, Colorado's Futurist Think Tank, 303-666-4133 or dr2tom@davinciinstitute.com
More on the DaVinci Institute at www.davinciinstitute.com
