Sun CTO Forecasts Micropayment Growth

Sun Microsystems CTO Greg Papadopoulos forecasts growth in micropayments on the Internet.

Micropayments could also hasten the arrival of Web services that interact with one another -- say, a calendar, map and traffic-monitoring service working together to automatically guide you to your next appointment via the shortest or least congested route -- with each collecting a small per-use fee.

Micropayments, along with marked improvements in network-identity management (a federated system that could make single sign-on a reality in 2004), mean that IT managers need to be thinking about new kinds of services their companies will be able to profit from, using all the latest advances.