Micropayments never work. It's too much friction for the median user to decide if they want to spend a quarter on an article.
https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/micropayments-and-ment...
https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/micropayments-and-ment...
The reason a payment is too much friction today is because it's surrounded by a raft of cruft: is there an extra "processing fee", am I signing up for a recurring charge and didn't realize it, I have to enter my card details and address, or I have to log in to some system, I have to OTP with my bank, etc.
It hasn't been solved yet, but someone will solve it to the point that it's a single swipe to buy an article for 25c, and it'll work. I would argue the NYT is in the best position to do so, but they are addicted to their scummy business practices where it's hard to cancel, you pay "$2/mo introductory rate" that suddenly escalates to $40/mo, and so on.
I could see Substack taking a crack at it also.