So the author of many business plans wrote another. Justice began sketching out a payment model built for “extreme” user friendliness, speed, and volume: The idea was to create an electronic transaction hub, invisible for the most part to the consumer, that would allow Net shoppers to piggyback small purchases to their ISP account-without downloading software or tokens, and without entering credit information. Justice would give the application away free to merchants and ISPs alike to create a big enough marketplace, then split the transaction fees with ISPs to make money.

The model mirrors what Justice calls the “only successful micropayment system, ever, on a network-the telephone.” Just as local phone companies serve increasingly as a convenient billing agency for consumers who make related purchases (900 numbers, automatic bill-payment, and even hard goods), iPIN aims to rope ISPs into a similar role as a billing service for their Net account holders, offering the service providers an additional revenue stream, and adding to their menu of consumer services that foster brand loyalty. “Take value-added services on the Web, sell them to the consumer and route the transaction back to their ISP bill. It makes perfect sense. Their ISP is what they know,” Justice says.

Six months after writing up his plan, and hoping that “a 10-page plan and a smart mouth might get me some funding,” Justice headed for California to test-drive his idea around the Internet-startup brain trust in Silicon Valley. By fall 1997, he landed an important partner in chief technology officer Alexandre Gonthier, an Internet consultant from France who had been head of technology at Red Dot Interactive. Not long afterward, Justice was networking his way through the venture capital circuit, and made an important connection in Amelio’s former aide at Apple, Jim Oliver, who made the introduction.

The iPIN plan fit neatly into Amelio’s post-Apple philosophy for venture finance. “There are two megatrends going on right now,” Amelio says. “Ubiquitous communications and electronic transactions. Both are inexorably changing our lives. When I saw iPIN, I thought, this plays into transactions, so that got me interested. And as I got to meet the team members, I realized this was a good group of guys very serious about doing what they’re doing.”

Fourteen million dollars later, iPIN is fueled for a go at the market, which has evolved significantly since the CyberCoin days. Among the many ecommerce forecasts issued by New York’s Jupiter Communications (see “Jumpin’ Jupiter,” p154) is a new one that has alternative online payment systems (including smart card systems, micropayment methods, and checking-withdrawal technology) accounting for up to 20 percent of all online consumer transactions by 2003.

While Jupiter analyst Ken Cassar remains skeptical about the growth of services such as iPIN’s, 20 percent of an estimated $41 billion in online transactions still comes to more than $8 billion. That’s more or less in line with Jupiter’s projection that the “paid content” market-news and subscription services, including the adult content market-will swell from $400 million in sales this year to more than $1.4 billion in 2003. That does not include the downloadable music and game markets, either, each a prime target for iPIN.

Together with the long distance calling cards, you can save money, since you may simply check your bill.