One thing that seems to me like an impediment is the lack of a trusted counterparty to handle contract & billing mechanics. For example: subscribing to a chann

One thing that seems to me like an impediment is the lack of a trusted counterparty to handle contract & billing mechanics. For example: subscribing to a channel on amazon prime video means that I know I can cancel effective towards the end of each monthly anniversary by simply hitting a button that I know how to find. I've done it numerous times, and as a result of the fact that I know how frictionless it is, I go around shopping for interesting channels quite freely. Entering your credit card details into a generic payment system requires a significant level of trust which I may not be willing to extend to some blogger I hardly know. Some people have very weird contractual structures in mind when they advertise "$10/month". They might mean: Yearly contractual term paid for on a monthly basis, but with a 3-month notice period, and contract renewing for another full year term if it doesn't get cancelled on time. Sometimes it can be difficult to contact customer service (or anyone else willing to listen to you) when there's a problem with billing. Sometimes, cancellation can involve having to send a fax. Sometimes they might sell your data to people who will spam you. etc. etc. etc. For all of these reasons, the friction I experience when contemplating what is prima facie $10/month is significantly more than just that monetary value. Here it seems to me that medium could play the role of that trusted counterparty (like amazon prime video) to make subscriptions frictionless. Or maybe someone should just do that as a generic paywall service for subscriptions. Or maybe that already exists, and I just don't know of it's existence yet (with the caveat, that, in this case, it doesn't really enjoy my trust at this point making it a bit pointless).