This story was delivered to BI Intelligence " Payments Briefing " subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here . Brave — a web browser co-created by ex-Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich — launched Brave Payments in beta yesterday. The Brave browser blocks ads, but it also offers a novel solution that allows publishers to keep generating revenue. Brave Payments allows users to top up an account with bitcoin, select a monthly budget, and select sites that they would like to pay when they make a visit. Brave automatically pays these publishers based on the amount of time users of the browser spend on the publishers’ web properties and how much the user is willing to give. BitGo is providing bitcoin wallets for Brave users and Coinbase is providing the marketplace for bitcoins to be purchased. Brave faces three hurdles before it can be a successful micropayments browser: Gaining platform share: Chrome dominates platform share with nearly 50% share of global usage, followed by Safari with nearly 13%. Browser usage is habitual and Brave will need to provide a compelling case for why users should adopt it — the ability to pay publishers likely won’t be compelling for most people. Getting the support of publishers: Publishers that use ads as a revenue stream could do a lot to raise awareness about Brave, but they are unlikely to do so. Publishers in the industry has already labeled Brave’s ad-blocking technology as "blatantly illegal" and for publishers with a softer stance, supporting Brave would still be a big gamble. Publishers could take the view that ad-blocking is here to stay and Brave presents an opportunity to win back revenue, but even if Brave grows in popularity, there is no guarantee that its users’ will top up their accounts to pay publishers. […]
