Singapore-based Cherry Credits (www.cherrycredits.com) has launched a secure micro-payments engine that gives content providers and intellectual property owners a new channel to tap on the lucrative teenage and young adult market previously unavailable or resistant to service-for-a-fee offerings.

Cherry Credits allows consumers to transact very small amounts online.

The bulk of online transactions are currently based on credit-card processing systems, missing out on segments of the youth market which do not qualify for credit card use. This problem is exacerbated by pre-set minimum transaction amounts for payments to be processed by credit card. With Cherry Credits’ patent-pending New Economy eXchange Technology (NEXT), consumers will be able to transfer and transact very small amounts of money. It will eliminate the problem of credit card “chargeback,” which occurs when parents, who discover that their credit cards are being used without their knowledge, promptly cancel the transactions.

According to Cherry Credits, NEXT is easily integrated with new or existing payment systems of content providers, for example, those who own or operate online games, social networks, blog content or music and video clips.

"NEXT's integrated online and physical processing-distribution model provides content providers with unparalleled flexibilities in distribution and payment collection," said Mr Addison Kang, Chief Executive Officer of Cherry Credits. “The technology is flexible enough to allow dynamic pricing that changes country by country based on Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), and even allows fluctuation by time, based on the content provider’s in-game stock market, for example, like that of online community portal, Second Life.”

Content providers do not need to change their community’s economic model, and can easily offer Cherry Credits as a payment channel alongside the more traditional credit card systems.

NEXT is supported by both virtual and physical distribution channels in Singapore and around the region, including in-store distribution points at popular consumer outlets such as 7-Eleven. Non-credit card consumers such as teenagers buy "scratch cards" of Cherry Credits at such outlets, and can then use them to pay for items or the in-game currencies of popular online multiplayer gaming titles and virtual communities such as Habbo Hotel, a virtual social community from Sulake Corporation, and Lineage II, a fantasy Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game from NCSoft.