Micropayments

Card networks charge fixed fees that make payments of a few cents uneconomic, which is why the web settled on advertising and subscriptions. Crypto networks with tiny fees reopen the option: Lightning payment channels can route amounts of a few satoshis, and layer 2 rollups and some fast layer 1 chains can settle stablecoin transfers for well under a cent.

Use cases include paying per article or per minute of streaming, tipping creators, rewarding podcast listeners, metering API calls and paying for machine services such as charging stations or bandwidth. The concept has gained new attention with AI agents, which may need to make thousands of small purchases that no card processor would accept.

The idea is old and adoption has repeatedly disappointed, partly because people dislike deciding whether each small purchase is worth it, a cost that has nothing to do with fees. Wallet setup, volatile prices and accounting for thousands of tiny transactions also get in the way. Fees on base layers can rise sharply in busy periods, which is why most micropayment designs rely on channels, rollups or batching.