Making Bank on Small Change

(sub. req.): A nice story in the November issues of B2.0 on the micropayments market, profiling Yaga and Bitpass, and comparing the current vendors in the micropayments space with the previous flameouts (Micropayments 2.0 versus Micropayments 1.0, it helpfully says in a table accompanying the story). “The more promising approach, which involves a kind of aggregate billing, comes from San Francisco-based Yaga. So far its clients include prominent media companies such as Hearst, Ziff-Davis, Time Inc., and Andrews McNeel Universal, the largest online distributor of comics. But BitPass, a Palo Alto-based startup, may be giving Yaga a run for the micromoney by aiming at smaller, independent websites.”

According to the story, Yaga’s real breakthrough may come this month when one of the nation’s largest newspaper chains will begin selling archived articles for 50 cents apiece through Yaga’s service.