{
  "dataset": "glossary",
  "record": {
    "id": "micropayment",
    "term": "Micropayment",
    "category": "commerce",
    "short_def": "A very small financial transaction — often a fraction of a cent to a few cents — historically impractical because fees exceeded the payment itself.",
    "long_def": "Micropayments enable pay-per-use at tiny amounts: a few cents for a single API call, an article, or a crawl. Traditional card rails make them uneconomic (fixed fees dwarf the amount), which is why agent-native rails like x402 and pay-per-crawl exist — programmable settlement makes per-request micropayments finally viable.",
    "see_also": [
      "x402",
      "pay-per-crawl",
      "stablecoin"
    ],
    "etymology_origin": {
      "value": null,
      "verify_status": "verify-against-primary-at-build",
      "source_hint": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment — concept dates to early web commerce (1990s); revived by low-fee digital rails"
    },
    "related_to": [
      "x402",
      "pay-per-crawl",
      "stablecoin",
      "agentic-commerce"
    ],
    "contrast_with": "Unlike a normal card payment whose fixed fee makes small amounts uneconomic, a micropayment is a sub-cent-to-cents transfer that only works on low-fee programmable rails.",
    "example": "Pay-per-crawl charges an AI crawler a small amount per request — a micropayment that only becomes practical with agent-native settlement.",
    "source": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment",
    "status": "active",
    "why_it_matters": "Micropayments are the economic model of the agentic web's access economics: metered, per-request pricing (x402, pay-per-crawl) instead of subscriptions or blocking.",
    "sameAs": [
      "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment"
    ],
    "bridge_entity": "agentic-commerce",
    "last_verified": "2026-07-06",
    "md_twin": "/glossary/micropayment.md"
  }
}