After 18 months of tracking and studying the work in the electronic commerce community, W3C joined forces with CommerceNet to address an area that we believe will be critical to the growth of commerce on the Web by the 1997 Christmas season. This is the time between shopping and payment, when the mechanism for payment is chosen. In the real world, there is a complicated process which takes place as indicated by the following scenario:
You approach the cash register and see decals indicating that the merchant will accept payment by MasterCard and Visa. It is, of course, understood that you can pay in the local currency. You ask whether the merchant will accept a check and they tell you that they do not, unless you have a check guarantee card that you do not own. So you ask if they will accept American Express. They admit that they do, but then reveal that they will give you 2% off if you use MasterCard or Visa; or 5% if you pay cash. You decide to pay cash, but ask if there is a discount for AAA members. They admit that there is, but not on top of the 5% cash discount. But they do give United Airlines Frequent Flyer Miles.
This is, admittedly a bit more complicated than usual for consumer payment. It is, however, very similar to negotiations that happen in inter-corporate purchasing arrangements. The JEPI project is intended to enable "automatable payment negotiation," where the computers perform some negotiation (finding out what capabilities they have in common) and the user makes the final selection decision. Technically, it hinges around creating specifications for a pair of negotiation protocols
JEPI was originally envisioned as a six month project, with eight participants (two each for Web servers, Web browsers, payment systems, and merchants). This proved to be overly ambitious, and the first demonstration of the JEPI technology is expected in mid-November 1996, one year after the project was first launched. Instead of eight participants distributed as expected, the project team consists of:
As a result of feedback from the initial project, we expect a second phase to begin early in 1997. The detailed design of the second phase has not yet begun, and will be undertaken with advice from the newly elected Process Editorial Review Board. At this time, we expect that the second phase will try to meet four major goals: