W3C Web Payments Workshop

W3C invites you to participate in the Web payment workshop in Paris on 24-25 March 2014. This workshop seeks to make it easier to monetize open Web applications, as an effective alternative to proprietary native app ecosystems. In essence, we would like to improve the end user experience and give users greater freedom in how they pay, to reduce the burden on developers and merchants, and to create a level playing field for competing payment solutions providers large and small.

We are expecting broad participation from financial institutions, governments, mobile network operators, payment solution providers, technology companies, retailers, content creators, and non-governmental organizations. The workshop will seek to establish a broad roadmap for work on open standards for Web payments, along with proposals for initial small steps along the road. We thank Telefónica and Worldline for agreeing to co-chair the Web Payment Workshop.

Background

As individuals, we increasingly have many personal devices, e.g. smart phones, tablets, desktop computers, connected TVs, connected cars, and even wearable devices like connected glasses and watches. We will want the same choices in how we pay regardless of which device we are currently using. A single payment solution is unlikely to prevail, and to reduce the burden on developers, it will be important to decouple payment requests from the details of payment solutions. The intermediary can be thought of as a virtual wallet. This should be able to hold multiple payment solutions from independent providers, as well as loyalty coupons and prepaid vouchers etc. People will want one wallet that spans their devices, rather than one wallet per device.

A large number of stakeholders are involved in the payment area: the card payment ecosystem (including point of sales payment terminal vendors, banks and card associations), mobile network operators interested in carrier billing, large established Internet companies, as well as start ups with novel solutions, retailers (both online and brick & mortar), content creators, broadcasters, and publishers, national authorities (with a view to taxation and legislation relating to payments), and non-governmental organizations attempting to address issues like financial inclusion and the unbanked. Some of these may have conflicting interests in the deployment of standard web payment solutions. The workshop will be an opportunity for stakeholders to clarify their positions, to identify a roadmap for further discussions, and to see if we can find shared ground for incremental steps to achieving the aims set out above.

More details about the workshop and information on how to submit position statements or papers are given in the workshop website at:

• http://www.w3.org/2013/10/payments/
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