alt Hacker NewsThere should be a new word for the not-exactly-micro-micropayments that the author describes. I suggest "minipayments".
As you, I associate the micropayment idea with truly tiny individual payments. Like paying for bandwidth by megabyte, where each payment is much less than a cent.
The risk of fraud due to any individual payment not being fulfilled is low. At most you loose 0.01c of money, and the vendor loses $ of potential business.
The $1 in-game content payments are already so well known (and for such a long time) as "micropayments" I had thought that was where the term originated.