Editing BitPass (section)

==History==

[[Kurt Huang]] and Gyuchang Jun founded BitPass. Michael O'Donnell was brought on as CEO in 2004, but left by April 2005, and was eventually replaced by Doug Knopper in November 2005.<ref name="ceos">(16 November 2005). [http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2005/11/14/daily30.html?jst=b_ln_hl After a long wait, a new CEO at BitPass], ''San Francisco Business Times''</ref>

Although the origins of the idea for the company dated back to 1999, the company incorporated and got off the ground with $1.5 million in joint venture funding led by Garage Technology Ventures in late 2002. The first test version of the product was launched in June 2003.<ref name="times">Tedeschi, Bob (21 July 2003). [https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/21/business/e-commerce-report-companies-are-trying-once-again-find-ways-turn-penny-ante.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm E-Commerce Report; Companies are trying once again to find ways to turn penny-ante charges for Web viewing into profits], ''[[The New York Times]]''</ref><ref name="paw">White, Elizabeth (28 January 2004). [http://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/morgue/2004/2004_01_28.bitpass28jd.shtml Innovating bit by bit], ''[[Palo Alto Weekly]]''</ref>  In late 2004, a second funding round of $11.75 million was announced.<ref name="money">Napier, H. Albert, et al. [https://books.google.com/books?id=znX7zZAToUMC&pg=PA171 Creating a winning E-business], p. 171-72 (2d ed. 2006) ({{ISBN|978-0619217426}})</ref>

For the content buyer, Bitpass worked like a pre-paid telephone card: the buyer signed up for the service and put money into an account using a credit card or PayPal.  This stored-value amount could be used to purchase digital content or services.  Transaction fees were paid by the content provider. For payments under $5, the charge was 15% of the price paid by the buyer (Bitpass Professional merchant account fee). BitPass also partnered with major technology and financial services companies such as [[Microsoft]], [[PayPal]], the [[Royal Bank of Scotland]] and [[First Data]].{{citation needed|date=April 2012}}

On January 19, 2007 Bitpass announced that they were shutting down, and operations officially closed on January 26, 2007.<ref name="shutdown1"/><ref name="shut2">(19 January 2007). [https://venturebeat.com/2007/01/19/bitpass-croaks-is-this-the-end-of-micropayments/ Bitpass croaks — is this the end of micropayments?], ''[[VentureBeat]]''</ref>