from Hacker News

Ask HN: Least-friction [global] payment method for micropayments?

by m52go on 11/21/20, 6:52 PM with 2 comments

I would like to experiment with micropayments for a service I run. I know most (all?) people have failed at this so far...but I still have hope, at least in my particular case.

Anyway I wonder if anyone here has suggestions for the smoothest, most friction-free payment method for paying 1 USD up to 20 USD on the open web (no mobile app, browser extension, etc).

Amazon Pay seems like a good bet to me since I imagine a good portion of people browse while logged in to Amazon. Maybe PayPal? I know Stripe and Gumroad have smooth payment flows, but they require inputting card information, which I think would be a turn-off.

Any ideas?

Target market is mostly non-technical people around the world so I don't expect JavaScript blocking or browser containers to be much of an issue.

  • by ayende on 11/21/20, 7:03 PM

    The main barrier you will have to deal with is that for most payment providers, the cost is 3%-5% + 0.3 $ - 0.99$ or something similar.

    For micro payments, that means that most of your income is eaten by the fees.

    Paypal offers micropay option, with a 5 cents plus 5% cost, meaning you'll pay just 10% in fees.

    This is part of the reason micropayments are problematic