Micro-transactions require micro-products, and those are a hard sell. Compare a tangible market situation: remember the old Bazooka gum that used to say "3 ce

Micro-transactions require micro-products, and those are a hard sell. Compare a tangible market situation: remember the old Bazooka gum that used to say "3 cents" on each piece? Few customers are going to walk into a store and buy a single piece, no matter how cheap and frictionless payment is. At that level, the burden of thinking "I have to actually go and buy it" exceeds both the financial cost and likely the perceived upside of a single bite of gum. You can successfully sell a handful alongside another transaction, or a bag of them for a dollar, though, because you've raised the stakes of the total transaction high enough that it's worth thinking it through. Maybe the classic micropayment story-- the individual news article/video view/song play-- is a single piece of Bazooka. Since it's likely to be ephemeral and competing with a nearly-as-good free alternative (the same content on an ad-based site), you don't have much room to make the case that it's worth going through a purchase process.