This is going a bit off topic, but AdWords is the world's best micropayment solution, and probably killed the need for all others:
+ It is economical as low as 3 cents an action.
+ It solved the "Customers hate to make micropurchasing decisions" by moving the payment from the end-user to a business which gets to automate the micropurchasing.
+ The micropurchases are actually billed macro-scale, so it works on top of our existing payment infrastructure without too many hassles.
+ You can deploy it anywhere in the world for trivial levels of integration work. (That won't maximize income by a long shot, but you'll start accruing earnings with a quick copy/paste.)
+ It is almost totally resistant to "steal the content and repost to avoid the pay wall"... well, when it doesn't pay for people to steal the content, but that is another discussion altogether...
That's a really interesting viewpoint, I have never seen that articulated before, thank you.
You are probably right that adwords / adsense obviates the need for many micropayments, but to truly become a micropayment worthy system there would have to be a much larger degree of transparency.
Basically right now you have to assume the middle man isn't taking advantage of your not knowing how much is being paid for your inventory and that is a thing that people are not happy about in general.
Aren't all the payments to Google from your account?
The end user doesn't fork any dosh, and you don't get anything unless you're get a slice of a corporate adwords referreral program.
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Maybe if the Newscorp paywall takes hold (the egg in chicken'n'egg) then Newscorp could institute a micropayment service 3rd party people (us/we) could use.
Newscorp might like a 0.1% tariff on all micropayments, and if there is one person who could take on Visa/Mastercard it is Rupert Murdoch
+ It is economical as low as 3 cents an action.
+ It solved the "Customers hate to make micropurchasing decisions" by moving the payment from the end-user to a business which gets to automate the micropurchasing.
+ The micropurchases are actually billed macro-scale, so it works on top of our existing payment infrastructure without too many hassles.
+ You can deploy it anywhere in the world for trivial levels of integration work. (That won't maximize income by a long shot, but you'll start accruing earnings with a quick copy/paste.)
+ It is almost totally resistant to "steal the content and repost to avoid the pay wall"... well, when it doesn't pay for people to steal the content, but that is another discussion altogether...