BT rolls out one-stop shop for Web payments: "BT Retail is to begin trialling a system for making small payments online that could be attractive to thousands of Web sites, at a time when Internet companies are pinching pennies. The system, which has already proven a success in Germany, could also make it easier for users to make small, one-off purchases, such as archived print articles or other premium content. [...] BT has signed up about 15 sites for the pilot, beginning this month, including Sportinglife.com and Handbag.com. The software was licensed from Germany's Firstgate Internet, which has already signed up 1,000 content providers and 600,000 end users."

It's not immediatly clear how their scheme is different from what QPass once proposed. This quote is interesting: "[chief executive of BT Retail division BT Micropayments Ian] Price said that BT's research showed that in some cases, users were five or six times more willing to make a one-off payment than to buy a subscription." The BT service should go live in September.