Joint Electronic Payments Initiative [JEPI] |
The web is increasingly used for electronic commerce. There are a number of operational payment mechanisms. Now is the time to ensure interoperability and extensibility.
The JEPI (Joint Electronic Payment Initiative) project, Phase 1, is about an extension to HTTP (called UPP, done using PEP) allowing an automatable selection of payment protocols (e.g. server says "I have Amex and Visa", client says "I have Visa and MasterCard", the system can find the intersection alone)
It is not a new payment protocol or scheme but rather a way to negociate and select which, of the multiple available payment systems installed on the user/server platform, should be used for a particular transaction.
A detailed description of the original project description can be found here and in the CommerceNet JEPI paper online. Also available is the original JEPI Launch Report and the minutes of a video conference that was held on Monday, December 18, 1995.