Web Directions South 2007 » Blog Archive » Make the world a better place, one micropayment at the time

Got wind of a really cool Aussie project today: The Footprints Network.

This is a great little system to easily funnel micropayments from any online store’s customers to genuinely needy organisations the world over.

There’s an approval process to join the network, but then you get an API that you can integrate with your payment system to allow customers to add on a microdonation when they purchase something from your online store. So you can simply have a checkbox for example that says “Add $1 for orphan care in Zimbabwe”.

Definitely plan to implement this for Web Directions next time around, but you know what I’m thinking? People like us could have a powerful network effect in spreading this amongst the organisations we do work for, and encouraging them to use it in their ecommerce projects. OK, I don’t know how tricky it is to actually work with their API, but I’m thinking developers could get into the habit of at least running this by their clients in any new projects, and of course including any extra development work it involved gratis.

Just a thought: would love to hear from anyone who has already joined up.

Posted: on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 6:58 pm

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