Western European Newspaper Sites Still No Fan of Micro-Payment Instruments

In this paper, we analyse 82 national newspaper sites from eight Western European countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK). For these sites, we checked whether the content is offered for free or against payment, we listed the payment instruments they accept, and we noted whether the sites rely on subscriptions and/or unbundled access options such as pay-per-view. Based on these dimensions, the paper paints a picture of the payment instruments accepted by Western European newspaper sites.One observation that stands out is that micro-payment instruments are still not popular. Most schemes are only accepted in a single country, by a limited number of sites. Tellingly, none of the micro-payment instruments is accepted by more than 13 per cent of our newspapers. Also, 17.5 per cent have yet to adopt an online payment system, for either macro- or micro-payments. A second result is that there are large idiosyncrasies between countries, which typically reflect differences in usage in the real world. Finally, our analysis confirms that traditional payment instruments are mainly accepted for the payment of subscriptions, and micro-payment instruments mainly for unbundled access options