Category: podcast-DGD-en

In the previous episodes, we explored a range of examples showing how small digital payments play a central role in very different ways. We saw that microtransactions in some areas barely suffice to keep up with the business models of the pre-digital era — for instance, in journalism. At the same time, they are opening up entirely new and lucrative markets elsewhere — as in gaming. And what about us? We often enjoy the convenience and simplicity of digital payments, yet we easily lose track and control — especially when paying quickly online.

In this fourth and final episode of our series on small money, we want to take a more fundamental look: Who profits from small digital payments? Why can I now pay even tiny amounts at the bakery by card without any extra fees? What are the things that digital money — when it comes to small sums — still cannot do as well as cash? How does digital payment reinforce dynamics of social inequality? And what does that mean for our society?

Tipping is often treated as casually as it is paid. What exactly tipping is cannot even be defined by a precise legal term, but is more akin to a “moral agreement”, as historian Winfried Speitkamp describes it, whose small volume Der Rest ist für Sie! is one of the very few German academic publications on the history of tipping. However, tipping is anything but a trivial matter: 10 percent on every “tipable” transaction, in a restaurant or in a cab, at least in Germany; in the USA, as is well known, it is even twice as common, around 20 percent. In economic terms, this adds up to astonishing sums – more than 2 billion euros per year in German restaurants alone – which are hardly regulated in Germany and, above all, do not have to be taxed.

In the digital context, the nature of the incidental, almost hidden micropayment has shifted. Will digital technologies give momentum to tipping or its decline? We explore this question in the second episode of our series on micropayments.

Journalism has changed fundamentally with digitalization. In part in its content, in its formats, and also and perhaps especially in its infrastructure and the way in which it is financed. Traditional subscription models of daily or weekly newspapers, for example, have fallen behind, and the secure pillar of income from advertising has also crumbled. Although digital equivalents have emerged, they are far from being able to fully replace the old ones. Completely different business models are needed – and these have developed and continue to develop.

In this episode, we will ask: What role do small digital participation models play in journalism? Do small payments, does the idea of a “mini-payment” help to finance it into a new phase of serious journalistic work? Or are the effects of digitalization leading traditional and even less traditional media into precariousness, and are the payment models based on small payments changing them for the worse, towards pure entertainment? And what does “micropayment” actually mean in journalism – one-off payments, subscriptions or individual purchases?