Who paid 99¢? | Hacker News Reader

Who paid 99¢?

whopaid99cents.com

52 pointstamersalama45 comments

Finally, a block chain startup I understand.

heh, reminds me of http://milliondollarhomepage.com

If you pay me 50¢, I'll tell you who paid 99¢!

The best part is, you don't even need to use the 50c to actually find out who paid. You can just make up a name :D

New SaaS idea: verify that the parent comment is actually finding it out for you for a fee (for obviously less than 49c)

Hello, I also offer a verification service. For only 40¢, if you give me a list of names, I'll tell you if that list does in fact contain the people who paid 99¢.

Additional question, is there some sort of copyright on this list? Maybe someone can just pay and post it somewhere.

I think copyright generally does not apply to facts (e.g. a list of names).

Article on this: https://www.businessinsider.com/who-paid-99-cents-website-th...

You have to pay another 99 cents if you want an update after you've seen it once haha

The author(s) of the site could be sneaky and remove those who pay 99 cents multiple times, because they now have paid a sum that is different from 99 cents.

I'm really curious to see how much they made

Pay 99c and count the responses.

I aspire to be great like you some day

I can't even argue with that

423 people as of now, so 420 dollars. I paid.

Obviously more than half will go to credit card companies.

is there a list any where of these kind of internet novelty's and the speculation on their income?

i think it would be really interesting to see how often these come up and if there is an ideal interval between these to grab maximum attention/profit.

like http://milliondollarhomepage.com/ twitch plays pokemon etc..

I'd love to know that too. I came up with http://www.ipaidthemost.com/ forever ago, and have yet to come across the right algorithm for how to get traction for it.

That's a blast from the past. I remember that page generating buzz and filling up with ads.

Go there now and click on some of them. Seems 80% of them are parked domains now, and the rest have been transferred to businesses that may or may not resemble the original one.

View source tells me this uses Stripe. Stripe charges 2.9% + 30c, which leaves the owner with 66c, basically just 2/3rds. Pretty heavy.

Per transaction fees in finance really suck. I struggle a little to understand why more merchants don't get rid of them.. as it still encourages cash for smaller transactions at shops.

Really confuses me. I guess they are smarter than me.

I’ve been told the answer is interchange fees: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee

> I struggle a little to understand why more merchants don't get rid of them...

Why is this a struggle? The reason is obvious. Most individual merchants have little, if any, bargaining power. Once you get big enough, you can negotiate lower rates, but you will almost always pay a percentage per transaction. Encouraging cash isn't necessarily a good thing.

Some customers (like me) like the convenience of paying with a card. If a merchant doesn't accept credit cards, I probably won't make a purchase since I rarely carry cash.

Encouraging cash is a great thing. I make sure to patronize and speak up about cash where I know the merchant will get the message.

It may be a great thing for consumers, but it doesn't seem like a great thing for electronic transaction processors

Priorities. Mine are definitely aligned with ordinary people long before payment processors.

Ever had bad things happen? I have. Cash counts then. Payment processors not so much.

Now do not get me wrong. The processors are not doing anything wrong. I am not making a statement against them at all. Just not one for them.

Not a priority, put simply.

I've never owned a store, but I imagine there have to be processors that charge only the percentage available to most states, even for small businesses. But maybe not?

I don't think the major EFPOS providers in New Zealand charge a per transaction fee, because most bars will let you ring up ever single drink individually if you want.

I think it is very country dependent. In Australia it seems hard to get stuff without the 30c fee.

66% of free money is still pretty awesome

It's also really easy to screw over the merchant. Report the transaction as fraudulent, and they're out $20-30 over a dispute that's impossible to win.

On the other hand, stripe is the only party providing any actual service here, so only taking 1/3 of the money is pretty good.

Much better use case for lightning network.

I’m firing up a Kickstarter for Who’ll Pay $1.01.

"Paid".

"Will Pay" is a completely different business model here, a riskier one.

Maybe that risk is calculated to worth 0.02? Hence 1.01 instead of 0.99

Yes. Yes it is. Your kickstarter commitment to this “worthy” cause is essentially saying you’ll be back with your $1.01 when we go live. And since $.99 was taken I had to go much higher.

If this were my project it would take you to a page that says “You Did”

I am really really curious to pay 99 cents, if there was a way to pay without giving my credit card information.

Who paid 99 cents 2.0 supports paypal or something.

You can try https://privacy.com/

Haha, what a fantastic business model

This is a very generous use of the word "business".

This is exactly what a business is: offering people something they want in exchange for money.

If parent had said this was a sustainable or reliable business model, that'd be a different story.

Yup. It is lean and mean too. Brilliant.

The simplified sales portal

Quick and clever way to nab some card numbers.

Should use lightning network for payments. No scammy credit card network fees.

Also at least 99.99% less potential customers, but hey.

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