There is definitely a market for micropayment processors but all the components must work and be perfectly aligned for the system to work. There have been many attempts in the past to capture this market and each one has been unsuccessful. Some of these entrants include Cybercash and Digicash. Cybercash introduced "Cybercoins" and they spent five years trying to make the system a success until eventually dropping the product. Digicash was a micropayment software provider who, after an unsuccessful attempt at the micropayment market, filed for Chapter 11 last year. These are just a few of the competitors in this space and the most recent, high profile players are Cha!’s 1ClickCharge and Qpass. There is great potential in this market if one of these companies can determine the correct strategy to attract a critical mass and become the standard for this service. The market includes pay-per-view articles, games, MP3 music, and videos that are all being sold currently using credit cards over the internet.

There are many limitations to processing internet commerce transactions that are less than twenty dollars. Not only are customers often reluctant to enter their credit-card information for such small purchases, but also merchants and issuing banks are unable to make money on such tiny transactions after paying processing fees. Additionally, very few companies have been successful on the internet with a subscription-based content business model. Therefore a majority of these sites have relied upon advertising for revenue streams in exchange for giving content away for free. With internet advertising rates declining, content sites must find alternative ways to make money. The solution is to implement a micropayment system to process small commerce transactions on the internet. The easiest way for the consumer to become comfortable with such a system is to adopt a standard. This, however, has proven difficult as many companies are introducing micropayment processes and digital wallets that reduce the time required and hassle of most traditional payment systems.

Another limitation of implementing a micropayment system is retraining consumers to pay for content that they are currently accessing for free. If sites suddenly decide to charge for this content there is a chance that consumers will be unwilling to pay for the content even if there is an easy and cheap method to buy it. Users also may be reluctant to give their credit card information to an unknown source and let them retain the information to make periodic withdrawals from their credit cards to attain the required minimum balance. Currently 1ClickCharge requires a minimum of a $10 balance and they will automatically replenish the account when their customers dip below this amount. Even though this is a small amount, consumers may not like the idea of maintaining a balance with 1ClickCharge. The limited use of 1ClickCharge currently will make it difficult to publicize to consumers and convince them that they should be an active member to pay for content on the web. The last limitation is the fee charged to merchants. Although 1ClickCharge is currently the cheapest in this space, the fee is still high compared to the 1-3% charged by credit card companies.

The biggest potential for this technology is for it to be adopted as the internet standard for micropayments. For these transactions to become more popular a single protocol must be adopted. Currently the biggest competition is from Qpass who is attacking the same market as 1ClickCharge. The other competition is from the digital wallets, which allows users to enter their information one-time and then use it for multiple transactions. One of these services is going to become the standard for easy web payments and it seems the technology available from 1ClickCharge is currently superior and provides greater benefits to the consumers and merchants.