Currently many people have Google advertising on their web sites, it may even be that a majority of the serious Internet users host Google advertising. Given that Google is already writing a cheque every month to many people, it wouldn’t be difficult for them to change the amount in response to a funds transfer request. Depositing a cheque in a foreign currency can incurr $25 in bank fees (that’s what the Commonwealth Bank of Australia charges me), this is a great impediment to international trade in small values. When Google already has an office in a country and writes cheques in the local currency it would be very easy to have that cheque include funds transfers too.
One significant advantage of Google payments would be the fact that Google doesn’t write cheques for less than $100, so someone who earns $2 per month through Google adverts will be waiting a long time before they get a cheque – but if someone has an item that costs a small amount of money (EG an online service that costs a few dollars a month) then the user would be enticed to use it.
Currently many people don’t place Google adverts because they believe that it would take them an unreasonably large amount of time to reach $100US. But if they could spend the money in small increments on other online services then it would be more enticing.
It seems to me that Google is the only organization that is both capable of running an International online small-payments system and which would be trusted by most people.
If you like this idea please post a comment.