[PROPOSED] Web Payments Working Group Charter

Background and Topics of Interest

The vision of the Web Payments Working Group —to streamline Web checkout— has evolved since 2015.

The Web Payments Working Group first developed APIs to streamline Web checkout. The following specifications facilitate the exchange of data necessary to complete a transaction: Payment Method Identifiers, Payment Request API, Payment Handler API, and Payment Method Manifest. These technologies are typically used together as follows:

• Merchant uses these APIs instead of forms to build a checkout experience to collect data and authenticate the user.
• Merchant calls Payment Request API when the user activates a (branded) payment button. The payment request identifies one or more accepted payment methods (via Payment Method identifiers).
• Browser presents a built-in user experience to facilitate the display, optional installation, and user selection of a payment app to respond to the request. The Payment Method Manifest specification provides the browser with information about authorized payment apps for a given payment method.
• Payment app supports user interactions such as instrument selection and authentication. A Payment app may be a native mobile wallet, a Web-based payment app (via the Payment Handler API), or functionality built into the browser. In the latter case, the browser returns payment method specific data, essentially enhancing its autofill capabilities for checkout flows.

The Working Group discusses many use cases to determine how standardization can benefit the industry, including:

• guest checkout
• various authentication approaches (such as redirect, embedded, and delegated)
• multi-tender payments
• recurring payments
• real-time credit
• streaming payments
• digital goods
• tips and donations
• discount codes

Deliverables

Updated document status is available on the group publication status page.

In the section below Draft state indicates the state of the deliverable at the time of the charter approval. Expected completion indicates when the deliverable is projected to become a Recommendation, or otherwise reach a stable state.

The following specifications do not yet have sufficient cross-browser implementation experience to advance to Recommendation. However, the implementation in Chromium browsers enables experimentation and the Working Group intends to maintain them as Working Drafts. If the implementation landscape changes, the Working Group will revisit the question of advancement to Recommendation and re-charter as needed.

Payment Handler API

This specification defines capabilities that enable Web applications to handle requests for payment.

Draft state: Public Working Draft

Expected completion: Not during this charter period.

Payment Method Manifest

This specification defines the machine-readable manifest file, known as a payment method manifest, describing how a payment method participates in the Web Payments ecosystem, and how such files are to be used.

Draft state: Public Working Draft

Expected completion: Not during this charter period.

Success Criteria

In order to advance to Proposed Recommendation, each normative specification is expected to have at least two independent implementations of every feature defined in the specification.

Each specification should contain separate sections detailing all known security and privacy implications for implementers, Web authors, and end users.

There should be testing plans for each specification, starting from the earliest drafts.

Each specification should contain a section on accessibility that describes the benefits and impacts, including ways specification features can be used to address them, and recommendations for maximizing accessibility in implementations.

To promote interoperability, all changes made to specifications should have tests.

Coordination

For all specifications, this Working Group will seek horizontal review for accessibility, internationalization, performance, privacy, and security with the relevant Working and Interest Groups, and with the TAG. Invitation for review must be issued during each major standards-track document transition, including FPWD. The Working Group is encouraged to engage collaboratively with the horizontal review groups throughout development of each specification. The Working Group is advised to seek a review at least three months before first entering CR and is encouraged to proactively notify the horizontal review groups when major changes occur in a specification following a review.

Communication

This group primarily conducts its work on GitHub and the public mailing list public-payments-wg@w3.org (archive). The meeting minutes from teleconference and face-to-face meetings will be archived for public review. Technical discussions and issue tracking will be conducted in a manner that can be both read and written to by the general public. Working Drafts and Editor’s Drafts of specifications will be developed in public repositories and may permit direct public contribution requests. However, meetings themselves are not open to public participation.

Information about the group (e.g., deliverables, participants, face-to-face meetings, teleconferences, etc.) is available from the Web Payments Working Group home page.

The group may use a Member-confidential mailing list for administrative purposes and, at the discretion of the Chairs and members of the group, for member-only discussions in special cases when a participant requests such a discussion.

Decision Policy

This group will seek to make decisions through consensus and due process, per the W3C Process Document (Section 3.3). Typically, an editor or other participant makes an initial proposal, which is then refined in discussion with members of the group and other reviewers, and consensus emerges with little formal voting being required.

However, if a decision is necessary for timely progress and consensus is not achieved after careful consideration of the range of views presented, the Chairs may call for a group vote and record a decision along with any objections.

To afford asynchronous decisions and organizational deliberation, any resolution (including publication decisions) taken in a face-to-face meeting or teleconference will be considered provisional. A call for consensus (CfC) will be issued for all resolutions (e.g., email, GitHub issue or web-based survey), with an appropriate response period depending on the chair’s evaluation of the group consensus on the issue. If no objections are raised by the end of the response period, the resolution will be considered to have consensus as a resolution of the Working Group.

All decisions made by the group should be considered resolved unless and until new information becomes available or unless reopened at the discretion of the Chairs or the Director.

This charter is written in accordance with the W3C Process Document (Section 3.4, Votes) and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

Patent Policy

This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (Version of 15 September 2020). To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Web specifications that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis. For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

Licensing

This Working Group will use the W3C Software and Document license for all its deliverables.

About this Charter

This charter has been created according to Section 5.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.