The problem is that most paywalled content wants to charge 50-100x what they would otherwise earn from ads. A typical newspaper would make maybe 10 cents off my visit if I didn't have my ad blocker, but somehow if I want to pay I need to pay a 10 dollars/month subscription even if I only intend to read a handful of articles.

Banks are the core issue here. Micro-transactions cost too much. They really don't have to; that's just greed.

There's nothing preventing a newspaper charging 10$ once to pre-pay your account and each visit debits the equivalent of their ad earnings for that page view. It would negate the impact from payment processing fees while still allowing most people to read in a cost-effective way.

The problem is indeed greed, but I'm not sure the banks are the ones who are greedy here.

> There's nothing preventing a newspaper charging 10$ once to pre-pay your account and each visit debits the equivalent of their ad earnings for that page view.

Sure there is, they'd lose enormous money that way. Because the small segment of users that would pay for the average page view are a large portion of the users most valuable to advertisers.

If they charged high enough to make up for the loss of the demographic willing to pay the price, it would be an even smaller group paying very high prices. And even higher prices once you charged extra to recover the costs of developing and maintaining the separate payment and customer support system and service for that small customer base.

Lots of people that are in demographics more valuable than average see stats about the average a site makes per view (or per MAU, or whatever) and says “I'd be willing to pay more than that.”

What they don't realize is that they are worth more than that as advertising targets, and the people that bring the average down to what it is aren't willing to pay the average.

In this case the solution is regulation that makes targeted advertising unprofitable (like the GDPR) so that advertising is out of the question and payment is the only way to fund the website. Since payment is the only option, there is no more way to price-discriminate based on willingness to pay and they need to keep the prices down to stay competitive. Everyone wins.

Recently I ordered something online using an Apple Pay button, there were no address or payment forms to fill out, just confirm payment.

That was extremely low friction, but would still be too bothersome for a micropayment. If any such model wants to have success, it will need to be completely frictionless, with absolutely no interaction required. And it would need to work automatically everywhere, e.g. built into the ad services themselves. There are attempts (e.g. https://contributor.google.com/v/beta) but that's not quite as easy as it should be.

I think Apple Pay includes the bare minimum friction to determine that you actually want to spend your money. I don’t think any less friction is ethical. I assume the Google program uses a cookie or similar technical means to indicate your membership in the program, which you previously opted-in to paying for through a flow with affirmative consent. That seems like an appropriate solution, and it shows that this model is supported by current browser tech. Websites are free to create their own membership programs, or band together and form cooperative programs, devising any system they like to set prices and divide up the revenues.

For what it’s worth, I make around $20 a month off Brave BAT as a verified creator. It’s largely completely frictionless for people who set the wallet up.

I’m getting spam robocalls that I decline to voicemail. The next thing that happens is a popup with an image of my Mastercard, which I think is an Apple Pay screen, asking me to enter my PIN to pay.

What would happen if I had Apple Pay set to Face ID for confirm?

Is this really an Apple Pay request, or is it a look-alike?

You probably pressed the power button twice on accident while declining the call. That activates Apple Pay, but would be unrelated to any calls.

You are absolutely correct. I was told that was the way to send a call to voice mail. I tried the double click, and it popped up Apple Pay, as you said.

Thanks!!

I don’t think the level of friction of Apple Pay is too high - below that level you effectively have a subscription, not a micropayment, since you’ve pre-authorised disbursement. I’m no fanboi but Apple Pay is as good as it gets.

Since before. PayPal's forerunners were founded in '98 and' 99. I used micro payments in '93-'94. PayPal was notable for being one of the first new payment systems to get market penetration, but at the time at least it was not considered as micropayments at all, as all of the micropayments platforms of the time (and there were many) were looking at providing capability of paying amounts down to a cent or fractions of cents.