imo micropayment models make sense in some cases but don't in many.

One way to think about this is to think about payments as commitments. The larger the payment, the larger the commitment, and the higher your certainty that you'll receive net value gain in the exchange.

So I think they make a lot of sense when our commitment may be low, but high enough that we're willing to pay something. eg Streaming payments for content from random creators makes sense, because I can bail out early and only pay for what I consume. But it doesn't make sense for something I know I'm going to 100% consume, like John Wick 4.

We all want the payment model that's the most efficient for our consumption strategy and efficiency isn't always one size fits all.

There was a wine bar in my college town that did this with prepaid cards and dispensing machines. It was novel but it didn't feel like a huge improvement iirc.

This makes sense imo.

So does this ... both of these are ordinarily trusted "afterpay" scenarios though which is kind of interesting.