# Micropayment

> A very small financial transaction — often a fraction of a cent to a few cents — historically impractical because fees exceeded the payment itself.

_The Agentic Web Lexicon · /glossary/micropayment · [JSON](/api/glossary/micropayment) · [all The Agentic Web Lexicon](/glossary)_

- **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:** — (verify-against-primary-at-build)
- **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