What's the best micropayment solution for a web app?

Question

If I want users to pay $0.10 every time they access a piece of content on my site, is there a broadly accepted solution for this?

Answer 1

I would recommend to create billing system, where users can transfer money via PayPal or credit card to internal wallet. Then they would be able to pay for content from internal account. Otherwise asking for a credit card number every time just to charge 10 cents would be ridiculous. Moreover, you will probably need to pay fees for charging their card which exceed 10 cents for sure. So it's both more convenient and cheaper to use an idea with internal wallet.

Also check this wikipedia article. According to it, micropayments have been abandoned since they have never found significant usage.

Answer 2

You may want to look at virtual currency. Companies like Jambool allow you to purchase in-game or in-app virtual currency, and your users could then spend the virtual currency to access a piece of content on your site. That way, users can buy chunks of virtual currency using their credit card or whatever, $5 or $10 or so at a time, and then spend small amounts more frequently. As Sergiy Byelozyorov says, micropayments generally have been abandoned, and I know most sites that have tried charging for content have failed.

Disclaimer: the company I work for uses jambool, though we are not in any way in a partnership.