Nickel News

Break through news paywalls! Nickel News eliminates the irritating and time-consuming process of paywall subscriptions with an affordable, smooth alternative. Often, online news readers will come across an interesting article, but they will leave the page once a paywall pops up that halts their ability to read the entire article. Depending on the news organization, the paywall will ask for a specific amount of money in exchange for access to the article, and this money will often go towards a monthly or yearly subscription to this single news organization.

Our team has created a model to benefit both readers and news organizations. Nickel News acts as a micropayment news app that allows users to access third-party news articles and purchase them using our internal currency of tokens. Users will have the option to browse for articles in-app from sources that have agreed to have their content hosted on Nickel News, or they can find articles outside of the app from organizations that have agreed to support Nickel News. If users find articles outside of the app, their paywalls will include an option to “Nick it” rather than paying for a whole subscription, and this button will seamlessly purchase the article with Nickel News tokens and save the article into the user’s in-app purchased articles bank.

Rather than subscribing to one single news organization for a large fee, Nickel News will allow users to access various articles from multiple news organizations at an affordable price. For news organizations, Nickel News has created a three-tiered system for the organizations and journalists to continue to profit with a percentage of the revenue, while encouraging readership with the easy, low-pressure option to “Nick it” rather than committing to a full subscription.