A micropayment enabled webshop for digital assets in virtual worlds
Michael Erwin Steurer, Frank Kappe · 2010
In this paper we will present a webshop for digital items in a virtual world that supports mobile micropayments. Virtual environments are a computer generated imitation of the real world and allow their residents to interact with each other and contribute digital content. In-world shops to trade with this content suffer from several drawbacks and a possible solution are external selling platforms also known as webshops. The price of the traded virtual items is in general very small if compared to "real world" products and therefore alternative payment schemes are needed. In this paper we will describe the combination of the virtual world of Second Life and an external selling plattform. For simplification we have used an existing webshop framework and added the required functionality to offer virtual items. The selling platform is combined with a mobile micropayment provider that is used for payments.