Pricing and charging status

When charging exists, a reader would buy prepaid credit and each answered request would spend a fixed price from it. Until then every figure on this page is a proposal.

Search, Market, Image, Speech, Find a match are not sold until their provider cost and resale permission are verified. A route whose cost has no published rate is never sold, whatever its capability. A bounded allowance is recommended; its size stays PROPOSED until abuse and unit economics are tested.

• The server alone sets the price. A browser may send only the most it agrees to pay.
• The full price is held from the reader’s balance, in one atomic step, before any provider is called. No hold, no call.
• Only a complete, delivered answer is charged. A failure, a timeout, an answer cut short, a reused answer or a reader who leaves releases the hold in full.
• A balance is the sum of an append-only ledger in integer micro-USD. The database refuses any change to an entry, any overdraft by a hold, and any refund above what was charged.
• What a request costs TAONIC at its provider is recorded separately from what the reader paid, on every request.

Proposed packs: $5, $20, $50, with a minimum purchase of $5. The whole pack is credited; the processor’s fee is TAONIC’s cost. Values are configuration, not decisions.

Revenue is what completed requests charged, less refunds. It is never called profit, and it is not what the reserve could use. That is eligible surplus, what remains after every cost:

Today every term is zero except provider cost, which belongs to free requests, so eligible surplus is a real zero. Charging is not enabled yet, so customer charge, revenue and eligible surplus are real zeros. No TAO has been acquired, because no system that could acquire it exists. The use of eligible surplus is in 07 TAO reserve policy.

Before one real payment

• The owner’s written go-ahead, phase by phase, in test mode first.
• A payment processor chosen, its adapter written, and its webhooks verified.
• Terms of service, refund and privacy terms, and legal and tax review.
• Sign-in and receipts in the interface; accounts are off today.