Web Monetization

A JavaScript browser API that allows the creation of a payment stream from the user agent to the website

Web Monetization is being proposed as a W3C standard at the Web Platform Incubator Community Group.

Motivation

The ability to transfer money has been a long-standing omission from the web platform. As a result, the web suffers from a flood of advertising and corrupt business models. Web Monetization provides an open, native, efficient, and automatic way to compensate creators, pay for API calls, and support crucial web infrastructure.

Why Now?

Until recently, there hasn't been an open, neutral protocol for transferring money. Interledger provides a simple, ledger-agnostic, and currency-agnostic method for the transfer of small quantities of money. This opens up the possibility for streaming money, which makes Web Monetization possible for the first time.