> All you need for micropayments are low fees - that doesn't require a pseudo-anonymous collective keeping a shared public database of transactions.
Oddly it kind of does, but for bad reasons.
Existing rules for payment processing basically require the payment processor to eat the cost of fraud. That means you can't have small transaction fees because they have to cover the cost of fraud or the payment processor goes out of business.
A payments system where there is no "payment processor" middle man to foist the cost of fraud onto thereby doesn't require that middle man to charge high transaction fees to cover it. In principle that could allow lower transaction fees.
> Companies like stripe, apple, google or banks like monzo could offer low fee transactions for example between two counter-parties who are both customers, bypassing payments networks and taking on a little more risk for a lower fee.
Scenario: Mal uses your payment service to buy goods from Alice, Bob and Carol and pays you with a credit card, possibly stolen. As soon as the goods change hands, Mal (or the real owner of the card) disputes the charge with the credit card company.
You have a bootstrapping problem. You need a way for the customer to get money into the system which doesn't impose the cost of fraud on you if the charge gets reversed after the goods change hands.
This could also be solved by changes to the law, but easier said than done, especially with a bunch of incumbents enjoying the larger vig from the status quo.