> But then you point out that there is no viable micropayments platform. Doesn't seem like there's much to mention beyond "yup, still doesn't exist."
Sure there is: "Micropayments are fundamentally infeasible".
Which is to say, payments are trivial to do. There have been dozens and dozens of startups doing online payments in various schemes since the beginning of the internet. But the fraud problem is not solvable on that kind of scale. Batching payments such that you buy one "thing" for at least a few dollars gives some level of assurance that one human being looked at the transaction and that the seller gave enough thought to be sure it was worth selling as a unit.
That all falls apart when you get to "one article" scale. You want this to be a purchase that the user doesn't even thing about (because seriously if I have to stop and think whether I want to pay $0.13 to read an article the answer is "NO"). But without that promise of thought it becomes impossible to reasonably authenticate a transaction. Users will be absolutely flooded with fraud schemes tricking them into OKing these tiny things.
Sure there is: "Micropayments are fundamentally infeasible".
Which is to say, payments are trivial to do. There have been dozens and dozens of startups doing online payments in various schemes since the beginning of the internet. But the fraud problem is not solvable on that kind of scale. Batching payments such that you buy one "thing" for at least a few dollars gives some level of assurance that one human being looked at the transaction and that the seller gave enough thought to be sure it was worth selling as a unit.
That all falls apart when you get to "one article" scale. You want this to be a purchase that the user doesn't even thing about (because seriously if I have to stop and think whether I want to pay $0.13 to read an article the answer is "NO"). But without that promise of thought it becomes impossible to reasonably authenticate a transaction. Users will be absolutely flooded with fraud schemes tricking them into OKing these tiny things.
This is what killed ad-supported platforms too.