Re: [webpayments] [Architecture] Payment App is a term used in EMV to describe the applet stored in SC (#31)

@mountainhippo 

I disagree. In the traditional and physical payments scenario a user chooses which payment instrument they'll use to earn points or which funding source to use to manage cash-flow.

They don't care about the payment method. They don't care if their rewards card is a VISA debit card or a closed loop store card. Their perspective is that they have a wallet full of options when it comes time to pay and they pick one, having a good idea of the result of doing so in terms of what they will earn and when the funds will come from.

In the digital world we can offer users a much better experience. We don't want users to pick from a list of traditional payment instruments, we want them to pick from a list of apps which are more intelligent than payment instruments and able to combine payment instruments or help the user select the best one for the job.

Payment method should be insignificant to users as much as most users don't care what protocol is used to fetch a webpage in their browser.

I agree that we need to think about the incentives for payment app publishers in selecting a payment instrument / method if they support many so that apps don't intentionally select instruments/methods that result in high fees for the merchant.

Some ideas in that regard:
1. Merchants should be able to express the methods they support in order of preference. How we force the selected payment app to follow that is an open question.
1. Merchants should incentivize users to use the payment methods/instruments that cost them less in fees by offering the user discounted rates. It will be crucial for the payment request message to be able to express different prices per payment method and for the app selection dialogue to express the range of prices that the user will pay if they select each app.
1. Users are going to use the apps that give them the best experience in terms of usability but also in terms of the benefits they get from using them (loyalty rewards, discounts etc). I expect merchants will begin to publish their own apps in conjunction with their PSPs and users will prefer these when shopping with that merchant because they will be able to process closed-loop payments like loyalty points etc.


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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/w3c/webpayments/issues/31#issuecomment-163279517