Ads don't work well for most publishers and they are irritating to end users. Subscriptions are an improvement in some cases, but subscriptions require that users make a long term commitment to a publication which is not always desirable for the user. Now that we have blockchain technology, we should revisit the idea of using micropayments on the internet.

Although micropayments have been talked about since the 1990s, no company or project has executed on making them work for a mainstream, global audience. The reason for this is the high cost of credit card transactions on the internet. It's not possible to lower fees enough with credit cards to make small payments due to the high level of fraud.

Blockchain technology makes it possible to send genuine micropayments over the internet. Because blockchain payments are irreversible, it's not possible to commit fraud. Publishers and other merchants can have confidence that payments they receive cannot be reversed, which radically lowers the cost of monitoring and responding to fraud, allowing transaction fees to be less than one cent for the first time.

Here's how micropayments should work. Publishers should have a way to install a micropayments system into their publication as easily as they install the Facebook like button. A simple integration should be as easy as copy+pasting code, which is useful for tipping.

For more sophisticated functionality, like pay walls, a Wordpress plugin can be installed. Or, if necessary, custom software can be written to respond to a webhook making it possible to use the micropayments in an arbitrarily sophisticated way, such as the voting model on Yours. For common cases, like the voting model, we can make these, too, available as a Wordpress plugin, so that all common use cases are simple to integrate.

For end users, sending a payment should be as easy as clicking the Facebook like button. For small payments it should happen instantly with no extra step, and for moderate or large payments a confirmation box should be displayed so the user has confidence they cannot accidentally overpay.

In other words, we need something like the Facebook like button, but with money. The money button of the internet.

If we had a button like this, using a common protocol for the storage and transmission of value, it would allow anyone anywhere to easily send micropayments to anyone anywhere else. By making it easy to use both for publishers and end users, it would be possible to make micropayments accessible to a mainstream, global audience for the first time.

We developed the money button in order to make Yours possible. We have several different uses of the money button on Yours, including tips, a pay wall, paid comments, and the voting model. These and many other payment models all become possible if we make the money button available as an API.

The money button is not just for publications and it is not just for small payments. It can be used in any kind of app, such as social networks or games, and it can be used for payments of any size, from one cent to millions of dollars. The money button is effectively an accessibility layer for the blockchain. We're making possible for a mainstream audience to access the revolutionary properties of the blockchain.

We have a prototype and we are working with some publishers on a test integration. We are also working with a design firm to refine the UI/UX with the goal of making a flawless experience for end users, on par with the most user friendly apps. However, the design process will take some time. We don't want to delay testing the money button in the real world, so we have launched the prototype today.