At this point, everyone knows the drill: subscribe to read this article. Subscribe to watch that video. Subscribe to download the AI tool that explains why you don’t need a hundred subscriptions. The media economy has turned into a vending machine that only takes monthly fees, and people are tired of feeding it.
That’s the itch RecastPay is scratching. This new “universal media wallet” from Edinburgh-based startup Recast is making an ambitious pitch for people to ditch the subscriptions and just pay for what they use. One cent at a time, if that’s what the content’s worth to you.
On paper, it sounds almost too elegant — micropayments, flexible access, no friction, no bundling. But it’s not just another startup swinging at Spotify or Substack. Recast has been quietly laying the groundwork since 2018, starting in the sports world, where overpriced streaming bundles and geo-restrictions are a special kind of hell. With RecastPay, they’re going wider: podcasts, articles, educational content, and even access to AI tools, all fair game.
“This marks a turning point for the media industry,” said Andy Meikle, Recast’s founder and CEO. “Consumers are demanding flexibility, and the traditional ‘all-or-nothing’ subscription model is failing.” He’s not wrong. A quarter of Americans canceled at least one streaming service last year, and the churn rate isn’t slowing down.
What makes RecastPay interesting isn’t just the wallet but in the way it weaponizes distribution. Anyone can promote a piece of content, from superfans to celebrities, and get an automatic cut of every transaction they refer. Media owners can let third parties act as sellers, building an affiliate network without spending a dime on marketing. It’s not hard to imagine an indie publication surviving off its readers literally becoming its sales force.
And this isn’t just about convenience. Recast’s payout engine moves fast — earnings get divided up instantly, with baked-in rules for collaborators, rights holders, or whoever needs a cut. There’s an underlying logic here that feels more Web3-adjacent than most platforms dare to touch. While Recast doesn’t position itself as a blockchain company, its model of decentralized promotion, transparent micro-transactions, and dynamic revenue splitting flirts with ideas common in the crypto space. If someone eventually tokenized these media rights or layered in NFTs, it honestly wouldn’t be surprising.
There’s still a hill to climb. Micropayments have been promised before. The tech is finally here, but consumer behavior might lag. Will people get used to tossing a few cents at content like they tip a barista? Maybe. Recast claims their partners are already seeing a 15.2% conversion-to-cash rate, which is impressive considering most media sites are lucky to get 2% of visitors to subscribe.
If nothing else, RecastPay is a sharp reminder that the internet was never supposed to be all-or-nothing. Paywalls, bundles, and bloated ad models were always just the easiest path to profit, not the best one. Whether Recast can steer the industry toward something better depends on how many media owners, and readers, are willing to try something different.
But if you’ve ever bounced off a paywall for a single article and thought, I’d pay a quarter just to read this, well… now you can.
