October 31, 2003

Peppercoin solves download payment processing pickle

WALTHAM, Mass. — The future of money is online. So said Ron Rivest, co-founder of online payment technology company Peppercoin, who spoke at the Future of Money Summit in Broomfield this past week.

Downloading copyrighted material without paying for it may not be ethical, but when you take into consideration credit card processing fees, it’s typically cheaper to offer it for free than to charge for it, Rivest said.

If music-sharing Web sites, for example, charged users a small amount per song, say 10 cents, they would end up losing money.

That’s because credit card processing costs about 3 percent of…

Christopher Wood
Christopher Wood is editor and publisher of BizWest, a regional business journal covering Boulder, Broomfield, Larimer and Weld counties. Wood co-founded the Northern Colorado Business Report in 1995 and served as publisher of the Boulder County Business Report until the two publications were merged to form BizWest in 2014. From 1990 to 1995, Wood served as reporter and managing editor of the Denver Business Journal. He is a Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder. He has won numerous awards from the Colorado Press Association, Society of Professional Journalists and the Alliance of Area Business Publishers.
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