Cents and Sensibility: The Marriage of Online Micropayments and Digital Commerce

Celent estimates that the digital content market will grow to $50 billion by 2009, but online micropayments account for only 2.8% of digital content sales.

In a new report, " ," Celent finds that online micropayments are a very small component of the growing digital commerce market. But online micropayments vendors are repositioning themselves to take advantage of the budding digital content commerce market that will reach $50 billion by 2009.

Online micropayments are just one small piece of the digital commerce supply chain. Online micropayment vendors main value proposition is that they fulfill a variety of unique requirements that merchants need to ensure successful digital content commerce. They facilitate online merchandising, billing, promotions, distribution, and financial reporting, all important ingredients in the digital commerce supply chain.

According to Dan Schatt, author of the report and senior analyst at Celent, "Todays online micropayments vendors are positioning themselves within the natural evolution of e-commercepromoting an offering, facilitating acceptance of an offering around an online product or search, and creating as seamless a process as possible for purchase and fulfillment. Online subscriptions, promotions, and post-paid billing have all gradually come together in the last few years, giving us a glimpse of what piece of the puzzle online micropayment vendors may ultimately solve."

of Celent's Retail Banking research service can download the report electronically by clicking on the icon to the left. Non-members should contact info@celent.com for more information.