Flattr - Social micropayments. Micropayment. A micropayment is a financial transaction involving a very small sum of money and usually one that occurs online. PayPal defines a micropayment as a transaction of less than 12 USD[1] while Visa prefers transactions under 20 Australian dollars,[2] and while micropayments were originally envisioned to involve much smaller sums of money, practical systems to allow transactions of less than 1 USD have seen little success.[3] One problem that has prevented the emergence of micropayment systems is a need to keep costs for individual transactions low,[4] which is impractical when transacting such small sums[5] even if the transaction fee is just a few cents. History[edit] Early research and systems[edit] In the late 1990s, established companies like IBM and Compaq had microtransaction divisions,[5] and research on micropayments and micropayment standards was performed at Carnegie Mellon and by the World Wide Web Consortium.
IBM Micro Payments[edit] iPIN[edit] Millicent[edit] NetBill[edit] Znak it! Can Flattr Plus Twitter Make Micropayments a Reality? Digital Bazaar.