I like this idea. But It highly depends on an convenient and cheap online payment tools. Paypal has so much commission charges. People are willing to pay for great stories by single medium story. Think about gratuity.

Not Subscription, but the tips on single medium stories you liked so much. $0.5 or something. Then the author can be paid by both the ads and tips.

I think the way as an software engineer. It would be better if Medium can integrated with payment method, like Stripe or Apple pay. Apple pay can be used in both iOS and Web.

But the thing is that Stripe charges 2.9% + 30¢ per successful card charge, I believe apple pay does kind of same thing. Then author and Medium can’t benefit from this.

Hope I can work on it as part of Medium one day. LOL