If you need to collect money online for some purpose from a group Chipin might come in handy.

During beta testing there are no fees, but after they leave beta they promise: “we will propose a tiered fee structure that will keep costs absolutely minimal - and in many cases still 100% free to organizers, participants, and recipients.”

Our VTOR group inside Second Life (SL) uses a voluntary donation script linked to an object which looks like our group mascot. Recently, Brady from O’reilly talking about how Second Life for micropayments:

The amazing thing about these transactions is that over 85% (just under 4.5 million) of them are conducted for amounts under a dollar; 57% of them are conducted in amounts under $0.07.

SL might be the most successful example I’ve seen yet on the web of collecting small amounts of money online. Next week they are releasing version 1.10 of the Second Life software which (finally) will include HTTP functionality. This could lead to some exciting new development.