alt Hacker NewsThe problem with paying a small fee for a service is not the fee itself. It is the friction for paying for the service and the hassle that comes after the payment.
Now the credit card company knows what service I am buying; I would get endless marketing emails from the service for buying additional things; my info as a person willing to pay for such a service would get sold to other companies; my credit card info would get leaked/stolen, ...
If the whole experience was literally as simple as handing someone a $1 bill, I promise I would pay for many many internet services.
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I was just thinking about this the other day -- hotels so badly want me to book directly with them instead of using, say Booking.com.
But then to book directly and get the "guaranteed cheapest!" price, I have to sort through even more options than on an aggregator, I have to create an account, and now I'm getting spammed from ANOTHER entity I never plan to do business with again. At least with the aggregators I have one company whose privacy settings I've already dealt with.
> It is the friction for paying for the service and the hassle that comes after the payment.
I don't know. Paying for streaming services seems very natural nowadays.
I really don't buy that the reason is the "tracking".
It's the friction of paying for something at all. There is no free sandwich, so people don't generally expect it, on the other hand there's plenty of free software.
I can guarantee none of your concerns apply to the people I was talking about, particularly the privacy ones. These people would pay for their meal at a restaurant using their debit/credit card without hesitation, and they still do, and that’s arguably more likely to get your card details stolen, and the issuer knowing about your life. Those worries you’re citing never crossed their minds. They just didn’t want to pay a tiny amount of money for an “abstract” thing.