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Comment by ghaff | Hacker News Reader

Technology is a non-issue IMO. People don't want micropayments for the most part. Some people tolerated "midi-payments" for songs and mobile apps to some degree but even that has mostly migrated to subscriptions and "free to play" apps with in-app purchases.

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People don't want micropayments because even now in 2023 the entire payments industry seems to not be able to design a payment flow that doesn't suck. The UX on almost all payments is just terrible. Being gated behind login flows, awkward input forms, TOU acceptance dialogues, receipt and confirmation screens, and being bounced back and forth between the store and third-party systems is just an overall awful experience. I don't care how much something costs, if it takes me more time to pay for an article than it does to read it, I'm out. I still remember the very first time I used Google Pay on my Android in a physical store as it was such a magical experience. I actually stopped myself twice on the way out of the store to do a double-take at my receipt to confirm I had actually paid - it was that fast and easy. Micropayments need that magic and speed. If the only thing standing between me and an article I'm interested in is a FaceID auth, that's very acceptable. This flow can be done today, it's just that no one is willing to strip the process down to its most basic form. If you can solve that first step then there's only 99 more problems to go.

I think it's actually because people don't like spending money, even very small amounts, for things they have decided fall in the 'free' category. As previous poster said, it's a monkey problem, not a tech problem.

Nah, people used to pay buskers with pocket change.

That happens less because they don't carry cash anymore.

It's the same thing here.

If it was easier to do, more people would do it.

Look at Onlyfans. People pay good money for what you can get for free.

Difference is that the examples you gave don't have the expectation of being free. Online news articles do.

I don't think so, the media has been pretty resistant to providing this kind of model. If they allow you to read a single article cheaply it would mean a lot of lost subscriptions and it isn't easy to price individual pieces of content.

Yet, "free to play" games are ludicrously profitable. Surely a large part of that is addiction, but there also is a tech problem here. If paying for a newspaper article has lots of friction (sign up here, confirm email, credit card, 2 factor confirmation, now you have a subscription instead of just buying; cancelation only by carrier pigeon at midnight), then no way.

That is also why the Google and apple appstores can charge such large fees. Sure, buying on websites and sideloading are possible but much higher friction -> many customers simply won't bother.

It’s really the credit card fees that make it non-viable. That and it’s hard to charge someone $10 to read a $.99 article, and promise them they’ll have $9 in credits they can use in the future. That and network effects.

If I had the option to pay $1 each time NYT or other sources pay-walled me out, they’d have a lot of my money.

I'm pretty sure you're in the small minority. If people were clamoring for micropayments, there's a large fintech/startup world that would find a way to make it work. (And Apple sold/sells $0.99 apps.)

Probably 4-7 dollars before you read something not worth the dollar and give up.

Would you be willing to pay for all content? Reading the first few 2 pages here would cost 60 dollars. Should you be paying to read everyone's comments?

The web site can provide user with a credit up to $10 or $25, then charge him.

I topped up a multi site system back in 2018 with £3, something like 10p an article. PayPal I think, but fine sat online payment cost 10% fir that or 30p, still worth it for the publisher.

Alas not enough readers used the system and it shut down. People don’t want to pay.

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