Back in 2009, CNET had the article Micropayments: The business model that never was.

Micropayments are a worse fit with today’s Web environment than during their first boomlet in the dot-com era. Part of this is simply that people have gotten used to free news and other content on the Web. There are also more sources of news than ever–albeit much of it duplicative and often relying on major news organizations for source material. However, more broadly, linking and search have become such fundamental drivers of traffic that anything behind a pay-wall (as subscription-only content inevitably is) will take a huge traffic hit. This makes such content less relevant; it also hurts ad revenue.

I agree with those arguing that micropayments are again raising their head not because changes in technology or consumer behavior now make them viable.

I am not sure it was right back then and less sure that it is correct now. The economic war that is being fought against independent news may be a sufficient to bring back the idea.