Commerce on the Internet

Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model.

- Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin Whitepaper

At the time the whitepaper was published, internet commerce was a growing element of the economy with the rise of businesses such as eBay and Amazon proved that the internet could offer people business opportunities. The issue was and is still today that all transactions that are routed through legacy payment systems to pay for goods or services via the internet rely on trusted third parties to manage the payment process.

Most of these services tend to be credit card processors, banks, or payment processors such as PayPal. These systems work well for payments over an amount of several dollars, but when we look at smaller payments we see how the fees incurred by these third parties hinder profits for the business owner.

This is a significant burden on users and presents a barrier limiting the capabilities of services to implement systems using micropayments for $1 or less. Additionally, Bitcoin payments are received instantly and can be considered settled within just a few seconds, removing the lag that most payment systems insert in the process of commerce.