While the comments cover a lot of ground there are two things that aren't completely addressed in my opinion. 1. It's not merchant fees or inconvenience. E-wal

While the comments cover a lot of ground there are two things that aren't completely addressed in my opinion. 1. It's not merchant fees or inconvenience. E-wallet apps are very common in Asia and they let you load an amount once and pay multiple smaller amounts. They even auto reload. They're, at least for the time being, cheaper then using any other payment gateway and are even free most of the time. They're also in fact quicker and more convenient than using a credit card because your phone is more likely to be at hand and the transaction often involves just scanning a QR code and tapping confirm. They're a very viable way to do microtransactions. 2. Culture Microtransactions have been around for a long time in Asia so have good adoption rates. This was the result of having to pay transaction fees in USD but having a currency that's a lot weaker. Think having to pay $1 for lunch and the transaction fee being $0.50. In the west, not so much. People aren't used to doing that because companies prefer a steady income from recurring subscriptions and the cost of transactions are proportional. Quite a few things that don't need to be subs are for some reason. In Asia subs are a higher threshold for sales. (At least they used to be, they're much more common now.)