@cdonat literally zero people use that. Anything which requires installing yet another app is a non-starter.
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@Edent I think it's a really interesting idea, but my initial feeling is that charges will make it unworkable.
Also I'm pretty sure many similar ideas have failed before, has there been a recent development that makes this more likely to succeed now?
@Edent the internet would be a very different place if we could replace ads with micropayments
@Edent reminds me of the original goal of https://www.axate.com/ which provided APIs for micro transactions for news sites.
@Edent I would like this as a feature, but I wouldnt like to see it as prominently as that. Maybe by clicking on someone's profile.
@Edent I would be very strongly against that. Incentivising people to make particularly notable posts will encourage all sorts of bad actors to post inflammatory and untrue rubbish.
@Edent I think we a standard for this across the whole Fediverse. I need it for Manyfold, and Bandcamp, Castopod and many more would want it too.
@floppy a standard for the button, or a standard payment system, or a standard back-end?
All gets complex quickly!
@Edent My concern is how involving payment processors would entail new levels of regulation and oversight, and in turn how that might decrease privacy and contribute to censorship and deplatforming.
These are nebulous gut concerns. The devil would lie in the details.
@janikvonrotz I'm sure it'll be ready just as soon as GNU Hurd is 😆
@Edent Good things take time 😉
But seriously, I hate paying online no matter the provider. They all suck.
I hope for a european, instant, inter-banking payment system / standard / protocol.
@janikvonrotz @Edent GNU Taler is here - I already did some donations with it.
@Edent
The technical side of microtransactions is simple - anyone can add a button wherever. Getting a payment processor to perform the actual financial transaction has so far been more or less impossible.
The only payment processor that any fraction of people actually use are Visa/MasterCard - and they will change you ~30¢ + %5 per transaction, so you will lose money (be charged more than the tip is worth) on every tip you are sent that's under ~$1.
@duncanlock I don't know where you are in the world, but in the UK and Europe it is free to transfer a single penny to any account.
I use tap-to-pay on low value transactions all the time. I even bought a single apple from a greengrocer once!
@Edent @duncanlock Pretty sure there would be a merchant fee and the shop just ate it
@davidgerard @Edent @duncanlock Yes, the shop will have paid the transaction fee for this and it will have been a fairly large proportion of the payment.
Not as large in the UK as in the USA, but still a flat fee per transaction plus a percentage of the payment amount.
The payment providers that offer simple percentage pricing (eg. Square at 1.75% and SumUp at 1.69%) are able to do so because they insist on a minimum transaction amount of £1.
@davidgerard @Edent @duncanlock yes. Using cards (even non-credit cards) costs the seller money.
@Edent think it would be great to something like this. Lots of creatives I'd like the option to easily tip. Could it be done in a client app?
Before I go and build something, does anyone have a template for all the payment services?
Looking for a bunch of buttons which are *consistent* in size / shape.
All the official ones seem to be as different as possible!
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@Edent
I don't know of any collection, that includes all these icons. Most lack liberapay, and opencollective.
Probably the easiest approach is, to get the monochrome logos from all of them, and build consistent HTML-buttons.
For OC I found it here: https://github.com/opencollective/opencollective-frontend/blob/main/public/static/images/oc-symbol.svg and for Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/about/logos Paypal, and Ko-Fi are here: https://github.com/sethcottle/littlelink/tree/main/images/icons though the Ko-Fi-Logo isn't monochrome. You might prefer FontAwsome here: https://fontawesome.com/icons/ko-fi?f=brands&s=solid
@cdonat see further down the thread.
Great, so I was late :-)
Maybe have a bit wider padding around the logos, and make the logos smaller. Like e.g. here: https://littlelink.io/
But that's like nitpicking ATM. It's not the most pressing issue, of course.
First pass at some visually consistent SVG banners - all using the official brand logos.
Thoughts?
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I'm experimenting with a "voluntary paywall" on my blog posts.
If you've enjoyed something I've written, or found it useful, feel free to chuck me a few quid or buy something from my wishlist.
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/02/reputation-scores-for-github-accounts/#paywall
@Edent I just had a weird¹ idea.
Set prefs to require follower approval. When people donate, they somehow link their Fediverse handle (donation comment?), which then allows that follower request.
¹I didn't say it was a good idea.
@Edent do any of those accept crypto?
@Edent
Sent you a couple of quid via wise. Worked perfectly. :)
@Edent Wow, I was to send you a £1 tip just for fun and PayPal would have charged me a 0.99€ fee, which I refuse to pay out of principle. I'll check the other options.
@Edent Idle curiosity… Which of those services:
(a) sends the most of any payment to you? (fewest fees / deductions)
(b) do you prefer to receive funds from? (quickest / easiest / lowest maintenance etc if it's not the same answer as 'a').
@Edent (I am guessing.) Your home made copies of corp branding for a project?
The multinationals (none consumer facing) I have worked for are very vigilant of their brand use. Not just look and feel, but were and how it is used. IME better ask them first.
@Edent Naively, looking at them cold, it might be useful if all of them had some kind of unifying common way to indicate that they are a way to tip/pay. This would allow users to get oriented quickly, even if they had never seen the platform that the person placing the badges has selected.
@tychotithonus yup. The idea they would be in a visually distinct box saying "pay me using…"
@Edent I've never used Ko-Wis Donen col. Are they any good?
@Edent shields.io has most of them already: https://shields.io/badges/open-collective-backers#
@Edent hmmm, on the one hand, being able to give creatives payment for their work is a nice idea.
On the other hand introducing profit motive on posting is kind of a major reason commercial social media is so toxic. Do we want that incentive structure here?
@Edent I think it would be huge for folks who are often de-platformed because of their art or job, but I think we'd have to be _really_ careful with the potential for scams and malicious implementations because of the decentralized nature of the Fedi. Might need some form of mutual vouching or other safeguards against fraud...
@Edent I'm confused by the concept of paying/tipping for a particular post. I can't think of a single interaction I've had which would cross that threshold where I feel their comment or assistance was sufficiently helpful or valuable to me to send money.
But maybe something to tip instance admins?
