Why isn't there, still, a way of processing micropayments to support writers?

Manuel Moreale writes about his frustrations with using Ko-Fi as a "micropayments" system to support his work:

It honestly sucks that in 2024 there’s not a good way to support creators with small donations. The “one a month” model is great from a human perspective but financially it’s quite awful: a 1 USD donation, after fees and taxes, becomes more like a 0.60 USD donation but it is what it is. I’m still grateful to the 85 people who are currently supporting what I'm doing here.

This also sucked in 1995, when I was looking for a way to support the web-based database system I was managing for the PEI Crafts Council, something covered in an article by Dean Robinson in Worth magazine's June 1995 issue:

One Digital Sawbuck

The artisans of the Prince Edward Island Crafts Council may be more comfortable with looms and spinners than computers and modems, but they’re always happy to make some cash—cold, digital, or otherwise. So Peter Rukavina, information manager for the group of weavers and glassblowers on the Canadian isle, decided to try out the cutting-edge technology of electronic money—that is, a purely digital currency that can be ordered and then spent via electronic mail on the Internet. “We’re forced by location and circumstance to be innovative,” Rukavina says.

Too bad, then, that the council’s experience with NetCash, a digital currency created by Software Agents in Germantown, Maryland, has been a bust. “It hasn’t been successful in any way,” says Rukavina. In fact, the group has received less than $10 in digital bucks since joining the NetCash system last July.

The council had hoped to collect money from those accessing its database of North American suppliers over the Internet. (Fees are used to keep the system up-to-date.) Conventional systems were unworkable—“We can’t have our staff answering telephones to process Visa and MasterCard transactions,” Rukavina says, “and we don’t want to send an invoice to someone in Colorado for 60 cents.”

NetCash seemed to be the solution; users of the database could pay the fee and, if they preferred, use it directly from their computers. Alas, Canadian customers cannot get NetCash easily; it takes time and effort to purchase digital cash north of the border. And an even bigger drawback is the dearth of ways to spend NetCash. When the PEI Crafts Council first opened an account with NetBank last July, there were three or four other merchants that took NetCash. The number has now grown to more than 100, but they’re mostly local bulletin board systems and information vendors. Says Rukavina, “It still doesn’t have wide enough acceptance to make it worth going through some extra step to pay for a 60-cent database search.”

All of which doesn’t mean Rukavina is done homesteading the digital frontier. PEI Crafts Council continues to accept NetCash, and it’s also considering accepting other electronic “currencies.” For now, however, the council will get most of its money the old-fashioned way. “People give us a call and give us their MasterCard or Visa numbers,” says Rukavina. “Or they send us a check.”

—Dean Robinson

"It hasn’t been successful in any way" was a blunt way to characterize our experiences, but it was true.