Re: x402

[Nico Williams <[e-mail]>]

On Sun, Aug 30, 2026 at 03:30:59PM -0500, Franck Martin wrote:
> Micro payments have always been "unattainable" on the Internet. This
> could fund newspapers tho, If one could pay $0.05 to read an article
> without having to subscribe to the newspaper. It needs a wallet,
> micro-transactions, no minimum fees per transaction... I can see why
> the crypto gangs are trying to solve this... 

401 -> authenticate.  Many user-agents then try automatically.  On the
Internet we use 3xx redirects for OAuth and not 401, but the idea of a
`402 Payment required` must be to follow the 401 example and trigger
some user-agent behavior.

What should a user-agent do with a 402 though?  Certainly not just pay.
It would have to render a payment page or dialog, but the site itself
could send a payment page if only there was one or more federated
payments system sites could use.

> Apple does not charge you immediately, they wait for a few days to
> see, if they could make one bigger transaction... They created a
> subscription system with Apple News, that allow you to read many
> newspapers. 

Sure, transaction costs have to be very low for microtransactions to
work.

Nico
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