- Peppercoin
Peppercoin is a cryptographic system for processing
micropayment s. Peppercoin Inc. was a company that offers services based on the peppercoin method.The peppercoin system was developed by
Silvio Micali andRon Rivest and first presented at the RSA Conference in 2002 [S. Micali and R. L. Rivest. " [http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/micali02micropayments.html Micropayments revisited] ." In B. Preneel, editor,Proc. Cryptography Track at RSA Conference 2002, pages 149–263. Springer,2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science No. 2271.] (although it had not yet been named.) The core idea is to bill one randomly selected transaction a lump sum of money rather than bill each transaction a small amount. It uses "universal aggregation", which means that it aggregates transactions over users, merchants as well as payment service providers. The random selection is cryptographically secure -- it cannot be influenced by any of the parties. It is claimed to reduce the transaction cost per dollar from 27 cents to "well below 10 cents." [ [http://www.peppercoin.com/press/pressreleases/2003/0929.shtml 2003 press release] ]Peppercoin, Inc. was a privately held company founded in late 2001 by Micali and Rivest based in Waltham, MA. It has secured about $15M in venture capital in two rounds of funding. [ [http://www.peppercoin.com/company/history.shtml Company history] ] [http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/archives/2007/04/micropayments_p.html Micro-payment's Peppercoin Bought Out] ] Its services have seen modest adoption. [ [http://masshightech.bizjournals.com/masshightech/stories/2005/03/28/daily9.html Peppercoin picked by Wurld Media for P2P payment system] ] [ [http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2006/07/24/story10.html Peppercoin scoops up customer for loyalty program] ] Peppercoin collects 5-9% of transaction cost from the merchant. [ [http://www.educause.edu/elements/attachments/rfi/rfi_2/Peppercoin_summary.pdf Peppercoin, Inc. Response to the Request for Information By the Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities Technology Task Force] ] Peppercoin, Inc. was bought out in 2007 by
Chockstone for an undisclosed amount.References
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