Entertainment platform, Imgur announced that it has raised $20 million venture equity round from micropayment tool, Coil.
Imgur will build Coil into its platform, which receives 300 million monthly users, to provide micropayments to users who view content.The collaboration will be marked by an imminent premium Imgur membership with exclusive features and content for Coil subscribers. A $5 per month Coil subscription funds creators per second that the subscriber spends consuming their content at a rate of 36 cents per hour.
Alan Schaaf, founder and CEO of Imgur commented on the latest collaboration.He said,
“Imgur began in 2009 as a gift to the internet. Over the last 10 years we’ve built one of the largest, most positive online communities, based on our core value to ‘give more than we take.Coil’s technology will open up new opportunities for users to give to one another and support the community in new ways.”
Stefan Thomas, the founder and CEO of Coil, formerly worked as the CTO of Ripple Labs.Coil was founded last year as a means to pay creators for their labor and it’s subscription service is now in open beta, and it provides extensions for Chrome and Firefox. He said,
“There’s no built in business model as part of the web. Publishers and platforms either make money with ads or with subscriptions.The problem is that only works when you have huge scale that can bring along societal problems as we’ve seen with Facebook. Coil will hopefully offer a third potential business model for the internet and offer a way for creators to get paid.”
