what — a micropayment system
This pittance system is a matrix of micropayment brokers
for moving small amounts of money over the Internet, from one dollar to as little as a tenth of a penny.
No fees are charged for these transactions.
notice — this is an experiment
Moving pennies over the Internet has been an unsatisfied quest.
The Man (law and government) may shut us down and operational costs may prove unsupportable.
However, a merchant-broker may avoid such problems, being a subscription management system,
hard-coding the pittance_with parameter.
And, a pittance broker can be supported by ad banners and interest on holdings.
customer — how to spend a pittance Deposit
money into your pittance account
with PayPal®
(some brokers may accept cash and money-order).
Pay for things on the Internet with minimal effort.
Your money-back no-questions-asked guarantee is inherent in the pittance design.
merchant — how to receive money Withdraw money from your pittance account with PayPal
(some brokers offer check-in-the-mail).
See form above for how to put a pittance form on a web page.
A clever web page programmer can code automatic pre-entry of customer fields
from cookies of the returning visitor.
Customer fields in the form above:
pittance_name - customer's identification
pittance_with - customer's broker location
pittance_key1 - customer's password 1
pittance_key2 - customer's password 2
pittance_key3 - customer's password 3
Hidden (but no big secret) fields in the form above:
pittance_mill - amount to be paid in mills (1/10 cent)
pittance_vend - merchant's identification
pittance_paid - merchant's web page if payment was made
pittance_deny - merchant's web page if payment was denied
pittance_call - merchant's optional program to receive details
pittance_note - optional information for merchant's use
pittance_home - merchant's broker location
The form, pittance, forgot and join links
should point to the merchant's broker.
fees — cost of moving money
Transactions at PayPal have costs, as do handling cash and money-orders.
Customers pay a fee to move money into the pittance system
(e.g. 30¢+3.9%). Merchants pay a fee to PayPal to receive withdrawn money or,
for check in-the-mail, merchant pays the move-money fee to the broker.
safe — security with simplicity
Keys (passwords) are never stored but only the MD5 checksums.
Triple-notch keys are assignable to specific merchants to enable no-click micro-payments.
Customer and merchant identification names must be true email addresses
to facilitate sending new keys when lost.
If PayPal is used, the email address must be the PayPal identification.
Note: Security is relative to risk,
so the pittance system limits customer balances to $50 maximum.
audit — everyone keeps everyone honest
Change your keys and view your transactions.
Customers may dispute
any item for immediate refund.
The pittance system refuses transfers
if customer had disputed a transfer with the same merchant.
To assure funds are available, refunds and withdrawals are limited to seven days past.
Roving audit-bots facilitate blocking transfers to merchants with excessive refunds.
guarantee — buyer beware
Individual brokers and merchants may (and should?) provide guarantees, forums, email, etc.
However, the authors offer the pittance system without ---
well, read the Copyleft statement below.
There is no complaint department but there is a blog.
There will be no email to or from the pittance system,
except to issue new keys when lost.
Use the PayPal dispute system to communicate problems with deposits and withdrawals;
cash and check users can communicate by snail mail.
To aid fraud prevention, no more than one dollar per hour may be spent
and Internet addresses are stored with each transaction.
webmasters — you can be a broker
The pittance system is open-source and free.
It's written in the PHP computer language and does not need database support.
It's interoperable so that customer and merchant accounts may be located
with different brokers on different web sites.
A merchant account is automatically built (with key-checksums from broker via matrix.php)
at the customer's broker if it does not yet exist.
All merchant account locations are listed at the audit and withdraw pages.
So, the pittance system is a matrix of micro-payment brokers.
To enable software audits, webmasters must make their pittance programs public-readable:
roving audit-bots examine those programs to assure conformity to the open-source published versions.
The file system (folder name is pittance) at each broker:
/name/{_name} — balances
/vend/{_vend} — balances
/deny/{ident} — refunders, excessive refundees and bad brokers
/keys/{_name} — file holds key-checksums
/logs/yyyymmdd — logs
/home/{_vend}@@{_with} — file holds key-checksums
/broker/ — secure location for broker program
The programs (in the pittance folder):
clog — collaborative weblog
pittance — join, deposit, withdraw, audit, dispute
auditbot — conformity auditor
matrix — called by customer's broker to provide key-checksums
transfer — move micro-payment
call — sample program to receive details
The broker program (in the pittance/broker folder):
broker — manage deposits, withdrawals, etc.
Download pittance.zip
(right-click and select Save Target As...).
Download pittance.md5
(right-click and select Save Target As...).
and verify with md5.
Also, see readme.txt (included in the zip file).
PayPal is a registered trademark of PayPal, Inc.
PayPal is a payment service with no partnership, joint venture, employee-employer or
franchiser-franchisee relationship with the pittance system.
