Meeting minutes
marks: Introductions
… Head of Accessibility at Chewy.com
web monetization
ahb: Web Monetization is an API used by websites to accept payments
… the goal is to standardise these payment links
… these URLs are issued by a payment provider
… declarative and imperative API pairs
ahb: supported in Puma natively and elsewhere as a browser extension
ahb: adoption is going well (Conde Nast is experimenting with it)
… primary use case is digital content
… but also digital games
… challenge is to get traction in the audience to get to mass adoption
… we at Coil are beginning to look at other use cases including tipping
… currently the micropayment is a set amount per second
ahb: Coil's business model is to charge users for a coil account
… but this is not a feature of the standard
ahb: goal is to get the standard natively across the browser market
… good support via extensions on desktop, and on Samsung Internet on mobile
ahb: there is also an experimental implementation in firefox nightly
… ideally the business logic would sit in a payment handler
… critical pieces are receiver, agent and sender
ahb: what is interledger?
… originated at Ripple
… it's a payment clearing network modelled on the internet
… currently doing 5 million payments a day with average size < USD 0.01
ahb: ecosystem includes interledger Foundation (a not-for-profit)
… web monetization as a exerpimental standard
… open payments as a open loop application layer
ahb: introduces Grant for the Web for people to boost alternative revenue models for the web
… fund totals $100M
John.o'brien: how do you think about the relative attractiveness of web monetisation versus something like medium?
ahb: we grapple with this at coil
… creatives typically gravitate towards existing platforms
… but the run into "who controls their audience"
… which mostly belongs to the platform
… and so you can be de-monetised very quickly
… we would like to open up opportunities for people who wouldn't (for example) have access to the credit card rails
[talks about Moduloop]
john.o'brien: are you reliant on the browser ecosystem to get new users? or is there something else that could be used
ahb: we think of it as a marketplace
… and at Coil we're focusing on the users, and look for websites to go to a wallet provider like Uphold
… but we underestimated complexity so we're now focusing on tooling and analytics for creatives
karen: Adrian, you mentioned web games being interested. Could you say more about this use case works, and what types of web games are more inclined to use open payments?
ahb: we're working with esports live
… and Cycle13 games
nicktr: what's the roadmap for more interactive payments
ahb: at the moment, the UI element is status markers on the extension marker
… but in the future there could be more interactive models like Tip buttons, but also things like Secure Payment confirmation
nicktr: how does that interact with things like screen readers?
ahb: I will find out
dezell: 1) what is the maximum theoretical limit for a “small payment,” and 2) how trusted is the extension?
And… 3) currently, how long does it take a recipient to receive funds?
ahb: we're exploring the maximum at the moment
… if you make the payments too small, the infrastructure costs begin to overwhelm the value of the payments
… we're also doing dynamic estimation of the exchange rates
ahb: getting people to install extensions is tough
… and that's definitely a barrier right now
ahb: payments are real time - in practice it depends on the intermediaries
dezell: thanks for this update
melanie.o'brien: does this work B2B? and can I do one-off payments?
ahb: technically Coil are making the payments *on behalf of the user*
… so it can be B2B or B2C (and it depends on the wallet provider - Uphold support business accounts)
… but we can bring on new participants quickly
melanie.o'brien: I do have use case in mind
working on use cases and other group work
nicktr: use cases are being captured here: https://
… and Ian Jacobs has worked up a template for working on more detailed use cases: https://
… I'd be delighted to work with anyone who wanted to develop a more detailed view of something that we could then discuss as a group
next meeting
nicktr: we meet again in 2 weeks (Monday 1st march) when we hope to hear about the Web Marketing Business Group from Wendy Seltzer
… other upcoming sessions include an update on Secure Payment Confirmation and some upcoming privacy changes in browsers