Online Micropayment Services for Individuals: A Comparison

I've been researching ways to sell things online at around ¥500 each, on a short-term and sporadic basis. I don't mind some manual work for customer management, but the biggest hurdle is always payment processing.
Bank transfers are the most reliable, but fees and payment confirmation are a real pain.
I looked into several payment options, so here's a summary for future reference.

Prerequisites

Here's the use case I have in mind:

• Unit price around ¥500, max ¥1,000.


• A limited-time shop, open for about a month, once or twice a year.


• Expected sales volume: a few dozen to at most 500 units.


• Even if it's just a few dozen per month, manually confirming each transfer is not feasible.


• At ¥500/unit × a few dozen units, revenue will be at most a few tens of thousands of yen.


• No system development — I'll be using someone else's web platform, so just a blog or Facebook page.


• Buyers aren't particularly tech-savvy — just regular smartphone users on LINE and Facebook.

PayPal

The first thing that comes to mind is PayPal.

Fee: 3.6% + ¥40 per transaction.
So for a ¥500 item: 500 × 3.6% + 40 = ¥58 per transaction.
Moving funds from PayPal to a bank account also costs ¥250 for amounts under ¥50,000.

For 80 sales: ¥58 × 80 + ¥250 = ¥4,890 in fees.
That's about 12.2% of ¥40,000 in revenue.

Not great, not terrible as payment fees go.

One interesting thing: you can use PayPal via Facebook Pages.
Facebook Pages has a "Shop" feature, and
you can sell products through the Shop using PayPal.

That said, PayPal adoption is low in Japan, so it may be inconvenient for buyers.
If the only goal is simple online sales, it could work fine.

Amazon Payments

Amazon Payments has reasonable fees and strong brand recognition.
Fee for physical goods and services: 4% of revenue.
On ¥40,000 in revenue, that's ¥1,600.

Buyers can pay with their regular Amazon.co.jp account, so trust isn't an issue.
On the seller side, all you need is a button redirecting to Amazon Payments — no development required.

Looked perfect — until I found out Amazon Payments is only available to registered corporations.
Welp.

SPIKE

A promising newcomer is SPIKE from Metaps.

Free payment processing for monthly revenue under ¥100,000.
You only pay a ¥500 transfer fee when withdrawing.
On ¥40,000 in revenue, that's about 1.2%.

Even above ¥100,000, it's 3.9% + ¥30 on the excess — cheaper than PayPal.

The catch: the free plan only accepts VISA and MASTER cards.
Still, compared to asking buyers to create a PayPal account for a ¥500 purchase, VISA/MASTER-only is probably more practical.

Sellers only need to add a link — no complex development.
Also, buyers can log into SPIKE using their Facebook account.

When you authenticate with Facebook, you immediately get a sales dashboard.
No bank account registration, no name required. Wild.

One concern: whether buyers will trust a redirect to a SPIKE payment page from an unfamiliar site.

Pay-easy

I'm not sure "micropayment" is the right word for it, but Pay-easy supports convenience store payments, which is great for buyers wary of newer payment processors.

Using it directly as an individual seller is tricky, but some payment services like SPIKE support Pay-easy as an option.
Using that option lets you combine ease of setup with Pay-easy's brand trust.

Via SPIKE, Pay-easy fees are 2.95% + ¥30 per transaction.
On ¥500 × 80 units: ¥3,580. That's about 8.9% of revenue.

Stripe

Often mentioned as SPIKE's rival: Stripe.
Fee: 3.6%. Cards accepted: VISA, MASTER, AMEX, plus debit cards.

What's impressive is 130-currency support, enabling international sales.
It also supports recurring subscriptions, trial periods, and coupons.
The SDK and documentation (in English) are comprehensive.

It feels less like a SPIKE rival and more like a different target market.

Yahoo! Wallet Fast Pay

Yahoo! Wallet offers a payment service.
Fee: 3.25% — quite low.
Cards accepted: JCB, VISA, MASTER, AMEX, Diners — solid lineup.

The downside: it's a backend integration type, requiring server-side code (e.g., PHP).
That violates my "no system development" constraint. Too bad.

Yahoo! Auctions (Mercari-style)

Thinking about Yahoo! Wallet reminded me of Yahoo! Auctions.
Yahoo! Kantan Kessai (Easy Payment) is a perfectly valid payment method.

You could just list 100 units of the item on Yahoo Auctions and leave them up —
buyers could purchase with Yahoo! Kantan Kessai.

Fees: Yahoo! Premium membership at ¥489/month.
Fixed-price listings: 8.64% commission.
Selling ¥500 items to ¥40,000 total: 40,000 × 8.64% + 489 = ¥3,945.

If the sale period crosses two months, you'd pay the ¥489 membership fee twice.
Without Premium, fixed-price listings are 10%.

Slightly higher fees than other options, but the ease of use makes it a viable choice.

Plus, if your sale has a fixed end date, you can set the auction end time quite precisely.
With other payment methods, you'd need to manually shut down sales — Yahoo! Auctions handles that automatically. Surprisingly useful.

Summary

• PayPal: best choice if selling via Facebook Page


• Amazon Payments: only if you're ready to incorporate


• SPIKE: top pick


• Pay-easy: as an add-on option via SPIKE


• Stripe: if you're going to build a real system


• Yahoo! Wallet Fast Pay: recognizable brand, but compare with Stripe


• Yahoo! Auctions: dark horse — great if you need a quick time-limited sale