About sending payments

Sending Web Monetization payments requires you to have an account with a compatible digital wallet provider. Not all wallet providers support sending Web Monetization payments.

Your digital wallet provider will supply you with the financial account you’ll use to send payments. Funding your wallet typically requires you to link a card or bank account to your wallet or make a deposit into your wallet.

Since wallet providers are financial entities, they are regulated within the countries they operate. One regulation, known as KYC (Know Your Customer), requires financial entities to collect your personal information and verify your identity before allowing you to open an account.

Web Monetization-compatible digital wallets

Be sure to sign up with a compatible digital wallet provider that’s available in your region and supports your preferred currency.

Tech tip

For a wallet to be compatible with Web Monetization, the provider must implement the Open Payments standard.

Your wallet provider will assign your wallet a unique identifier called a wallet address or a payment pointer. You’ll need this identifier to link the Web Monetization extension to your wallet.

Identifier	Example format
Payment pointer	$wallet.example.com/alice
Wallet address	https://wallet.example.com/alice

Web Monetization extension

The Web Monetization extension allows you to send payments. It links to your digital wallet account so that it can send payments from your wallet on your behalf.

When you set up the extension, you set your budget. Your budget is the max amount that the extension has access to. You can also set the amount that the extension will send per hour. The default is $0.60.

As you browse, the extension checks each page for Web Monetization. When found, the extension grabs the information it needs from the page’s code to set up a payment based on your settings.

You can also choose to send a web monetized page a one-time payment. The amount is deducted from your budget.

Payments

Your Web Monetization extension acts like a messaging service. It requests information from the recipient’s wallet provider, then passes the information, along with your payment instructions, to your wallet provider. It’s then up to your wallet provider to deduct the payment from your account and send it to the recipient.

Micropayments

If you’re already familiar with Web Monetization, you may have heard about how it supports micropayments.

In general, a micropayment is a very small payment. Each wallet provider is responsible for:

• Deciding whether to support sending and/or receiving micropayments
• Defining what a micropayment is in the context of their business
• Determining the minimum amount for a micropayment

Example 1

Your wallet provider allows you to send micropayments. They’ve decided that a micropayment is any payment under $0.05 USD; however, the minimum amount they support is $0.01. This means you could, for example, send a payment as low as one US cent.

Example 2

Your wallet provider allows you to send micropayments. They’ve decided that a micropayment is a fraction of a US cent, with a minimum value of one hundredth of a cent. This means you could, for example, send a payment as low as $0.0001 USD.