I am new to W3C’s Web Payments Interest Group and also to the payments industry. So it was very exciting to meet the group at their recent face-to-face meeting in Utrecht (Netherlands), hosted by Rabobank.
I spent an afternoon in Amsterdam visiting friends before taking the train to Utrecht. I had difficulty paying for my train ticket with my US credit card. I don’t know enough about how payment networks work to understand what went wrong. But I hoped that by the next time I visit, we will have made it easier to make this sort of payment.
We met for three days just a few steps from the train station, in the Jaarbeurs Utrecht conference center. I enjoyed all three main parts of my stay: the work agenda, the relationship building, and the swing dancing.
I’ve written a summary of the work agenda. At a high level, the group is currently working on a set of Web Payments Use Cases that will define the initial scope of our work. These will include topics like initiating a payment from a Web site, choosing from among available payment instruments (e.g., credit cards, cryptocurrencies, coupons, paypal, etc.), and making a payment on a site without needing to register with the site.
At the same time as the group is developing these use cases, it is working on a glossary of terms that will be shared among the use cases. The group recognizes that a lot of work has been done for decades to create industry vocabularies, and so it wants to reuse existing standards as much as possible. At the same time, the group recognizes the need to speak to Web developers who may not be familiar with these terms.
One of the primary goals of the group is to reduce fraud, both online and in brick-and-mortar stores. Because there is so much work in this area (both inside and outside W3C), we launched a Security Task Force to enhance our liaisons with other groups. We are particularly interested in how to align payment industry needs with the extent same-origin security model for the Web.
At the same time as the group is elaborating a set of use cases, we have begun discussion about a “payment agent” architecture capable of addressing the use cases. We have been using the phrase “payment agent” rather than “digital wallet” for several reasons, including “digital wallet” being overloaded with meanings beyond payment, and for also to align with W3C’s term “user agent.” A payment agent will be capable of executing transactions on an entity’s behalf (such as a user or merchant). I believe the group’s goal is to define a payment agent architecture that is flexible enough to allow a large number of business models and payment schemes, while being specific enough to create real interoperability.
Here’s how I see it all coming together:
- The Interest Group will create a stable set of use cases.
- The group will propose a payment agent architecture and a specific set of requirements that would need to be met to be able to implement the architecture.
- The group will evaluate existing technologies and then propose new work items (or changes) for standardization.
We still have a lot of technical work ahead, but it was very exciting to see people gathering around the white board talking about architecture. Pat Adler (US Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis) and I volunteered to create a Communications Strategy Task Force because we know that we will need to share news of our work with people in the payments industry as well as Web developers.
Possibly even more valuable than the discussions during the meeting were the great opportunities to get to know one another (and our diverse perspectives) at coffee breaks, at the white board after the meeting had adjourned, and during evening meals —Borobudur for Indonesian, and Mahanakorn for Thai. I am really glad to have spent my first three days in the group at a face-to-face meeting, and look forward to the next one in a few months.
I also mentioned swing dancing. I want to thank the friendly people from Swing in Utrecht who organize a weekly swing event at de Winkel van Sinkel. I was rusty but enjoyed dancing shortly before I left Utrecht.