Financial Times Website Turns To PayPal

Speaking at the Financial Times‘ Digital Media and Broadcasting Conference in London yesterday, Financial Times CEO John Ridding announced that FT.com would look into accepting payments for its content via PayPal.

Currently, the site charges an annual subscription fee. However, under its proposed new system, FT.com will accept payment for daily or weekly access to online content with the possibility of micropayments per article. The cost currently being considered for daily access will be approximately $3 USD, or the cost of the print Financial Times‘ UK cover price.

At the same conference, New York Times chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. spoke on the publication’s decision to introduce a paywall in 2011 in order to “get it right” rather than get it up quickly. The paywall, he explained, would work to supplement advertising revenues for the site, not supplant it. Sulzberger also touched on the possibility of charging for an iPad application for the New York Times‘ website, adding: “One thing we have to avoid is saying, ‘No we are not going to do that.’ If you aren’t occasionally failing, you aren’t trying hard enough.”

Tell us: Would you pay three dollars for daily access to a website? Is the decision to team with PayPal a wise one? (Given our ongoing safety and customer service issues with the e-commerce business, we’d say, “NO.”)

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