This explanation strikes me as being closest. There is a well known problem, which is that using the non-crypto payment systems for things is difficult, by disintermediating the payment provider from the product the paidlink guys can say they have clean hands.

VISA: "What are you selling?"

PL: "Links"

VISA: "Links to what? Prohibited items?"

PL: "Oh no, our TOS doesn't allow that, we tell our customers not do do that."

VISA: "Can you verify that they don't?"

PL: "Uh, well as far as our platform is concerned their just links, you know like groceries are just groceries, we don't get into the nitty gritty of what exactly they are."

The weird thing is, even if the PL guys are 100% aligned with not letting their customers use this for "bad things" their customers are going to try to find ways around any systems they put in place to check or regulate.

Watching the shenanigans people pulled to get around our efforts to prevent the misuse of Blekko (a search engine) was really educational in that regard.

The locker displays the qr code and polls for payment status

The ability to create a link that you click on, and it only gives you access to the results after you pay some money, has been implemented by many frameworks and commerce "stacks". Given that if you implement something that way with an off the shelf front end, you probably already have the capability to gateway the link with a payment ask. So that sets up the situation that we have a thing that just does one part of this kind of the thing, the pay when you click. Sort of "instant paywall for URIs" kind of thing. I think the question "Why would I use that?" or "What problem is this trying to solve?" implies that there is something about the well known solutions that prevents you from using them.

My guess was that you wouldn't use one of the existing solutions if you wanted to obfuscate the connection between the payment and the product. And it is just a guess, I have no investment in it being "the actual reason" or being right about my guess, just speculating here.

From your comment it suggests that you know of "desirable purposes" for just such a service. (which sounds like a problem solution right?) I would love to hear them. I am sure I'll learn something new and that will be awesome.

Bar with a cover charge puts a QR code on the front door. QR code leads you to a paid link, you pay for access, it shows a thumbs up, you show the bouncer, they let you in.

Let's the venue track how many people showed up, doesn't require a whole account situation, and also reduces the need for people to deal with card processing or cash at the door. Also let's you come and go without a wristband or stamp or something else to verify you already paid. Trivial to change the URL each day so you can't use a previous day. Or let it ride for weekend access, etc

Not sure if better solutions already exist though

I think you're on to something here. Much like cryptocurrencies, I'm thinking that the most important uses here are at best questionably legitimate. Very few honest and above-board businesses have an interest in obfuscating what's being sold like this, but quite a few less legitimate ones do. Hit a URL to send money? Sounds great for money laundering, fraud, or extortion when you can move money around using convenient services and the veneer of legitimacy.

But on the other hand, this might be a plausible deniability sort of thing. This way paidlink.to doesn't host anything, they don't even say what it is that they're going to direct the user to. This might be an attempt to keep payment processors off their back as long as possible.

It may not work forever but since next to nothing is being provided, this site is extremely cheap to setup and run, which means it won't take long to pay off.

This significantly lowers the bar for what is required to have a "webshop" like page. For example: a Reddit post can have a product description, with payment links directly in the description, and reviews in the comments. How convenient is that?

2.

> What the heck am I paying for?

I assume you accessed their example link. In practice you would have clicked the link from a page describing what you are paying for.

I'm not affiliated with the product. Just found this a really cool and innovative idea.

Sure, at the exact moment you're entering your card details, it doesn't say what the product is.

However, it seems this could be changed quite trivially. Just add an optional `description` field to the form used to generate the url, and let the description be displayed on the payment page.

And I've used such services, yes. But this looks way too minimalistic to me to be useful.

On Patreon I subscribe to a specific artist. I know who they are and they can know me if we talk to each other. I can favorite posts, provide feedback, get perks, etc. When an artist says that for $10 I'll get access to their latest sketches that's a public announcement on Patreon, and if they don't hold up their promise, fans will get upset.

Here there's an obscure link. I don't know what I'm paying for, or who made it. I don't know whether it belongs to the actual person who's supposed to benefit. Somebody could pay for the first access, make their own link and then leech off the actual artist by spreading their link around.

Sure, but that was a problem that already existed. People already sell other people's artworks / pictures / etc.. Having to copy a file rather than a link is not a significant barrier.

> Even if I followed a link and expect to be paying, a scammer could also send me a link to the same content. I expected to pay through this site so I go ahead and pay for the content. Since I followed the scammer's link they get paid instead of the content owner.

Presumably you're getting the link from somewhere reputable - the creator's own site, or their patreon/twitter/etc.. Sure, a scammer can create a fake profile to impersonate them - but again, that's something that already happens.

It's not helped that there's no preview of the content or creator's site branding to give some indication of an intentional connection between the creator and paid link.

How does anything like that help though? The scammer can download the file and host it themselves and you're right back where you started, and that's always going to be the case.

If it's a link, it's available to anyone if they have it

Of course you wouldn't just pay money for some random link you found on Google search.

One of the reasons that Bitcoin never took off for their stated purpose, payment, is that they had a similarly too-simple model of irreversible one-shot transfers. Anybody who has worked on an actual payment system can tell you that commerce is more complex than that.

The bigger issues with BTC is the onboarding problem, limited capacity and rapidly fluctuating exchange rate.

But I think you're missing my point. The anonymous, one-shot nature of things made it most appealing to only one set of merchants and one set of customers: people doing crime, and who were therefore most tolerant of the risks.

The onboarding problem is also partly a consequence of this. Because a bitcoin transaction is irreversible, and exchange can't just take a credit card payment and give you bitcoin.

I would use Bitcoin to play poker online because the alternative was using Western Union - which is much more of a hassle.

Because of this issue, online poker sites now use Litecoin, BSV, BCH, etc.

See: bovada.lv and other poker sites who still offer their services to US players

I don't think you can claim it as deflationary overall, but yeah, volatile for sure, riskier as well. But it's not like that's the only currency you take a risk with. When I had a plane ticket refunded to me that was settled in Euros I ate a $50 difference due to conversion fees (which were not refunded to me by Paypal). So currency conversion is a risk anyway.

Slow is also relative, a wire would take several days to come in. If I write you a check it takes a few months to clear, even though the bank will lend you that money before it clears.

And I would claim using those methods of payment is more inconvenient. Credit cards are not exactly equivalents because those funds are lent to you by a bank and you pay them back later.

The equivalent for Bitcoin would be Lightning Network, but it's not really usable right now, if it will ever be. Your channel might be closed after 45 days of not using it and other surprises you will experience if you actually use it.

For smaller payments it's actually better to accept 0 conf BCH payments. It has a feature called double spend proofs where after 3 seconds (the time it takes to enter the mempool of all of the nodes) it can detect whether this transaction is being double-spent

You can still double-spend it, but you need a pool with a decent chunk of mining power of the whole network to help you. So for a $1,000,000 payment it would be worth hacking the network (since you are a big pool operator you need it to be worth your while), but not for a $3 coffee

This is pretty much what solution in search of a problem is. "Here, we made this thing that solves this problem someone could theoretically have." crickets

(Edit) In terms of transparency, there isn't really much to find out about of who is behind this service. From the terms of service (hosted by another domain) we learn:

Neptune Technologies, United States (no further address details)

But there's an email address, and this is the site behind that domain: http://www.neptune.is (???)

The other issues with this site aside, affiliate programs don't require the user purchase the item that brought them to the site. There's a book I found myself recommending quite often, so I created an affiliate account at a retailer and started using that link when I recommended it online. I make about $100 each quarter off of site referrals, but almost no one buys the book -- instead they follow the link, click on something in a related items carousel and buy one of those items. Sometimes the time between click and purchase is pretty long (weeks or even months), but as long as the affiliate cook persists I get a percentage of the purchase price.

Who is the subject? Because in my mind, for most things sold, as the buyer, you actually just want the product/service.

> I don't recall ever getting out my credit card and paying $5

Even if you never shopped in a retail store or dined in a restaurant and paid with your credit card (which seems somewhat unlikely) you are familiar with the concept of paying for something "random" as a one of. What's the conceptual hurdle?

But oh boy this seems to be an invitation to money laundering. 3 2 1 and people are going to put up links, and buy them themselves with stolen credit cards.

It's quite possible this isn't determined yet. It might exactly be a solution searching for a problem, intentionally so.

The creator can implement the idea and launch it as a proof-of-concept, and see if anyone comes up with any good use cases for it. Maybe it goes nowhere, but maybe it's worth a shot at hitting it big in some unforeseen niche.