@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.
