Re: [webpayments] How should the message schemas for the payment request and response be defined? (#27)

Message formats should be decoupled from the API.

Payment data structures are already well defined in the industry. Message formats for financial services are ISO 20022 XML data structures.

The payment agent process should be responsible to construct the data structures and format from the API calls.

Model the work flow and API choreography of a payment request. If the browser community reinvents financial services data structures and message formats it will require 10's of 1000's of development man-years to adjust 30 years of legacy infrastructure to a different data structure.

Follow ISO 20022. Everything you need is already there.

Out of scope, but as I have mentioned many times, ISO 20022 are normally unsecured and travel over private pipes between institutions. Applying security required in an open hostile network like the internet will require changes to wire formats.

This security efforts should be more payment agent specific and not worried about at the W3C Browser API specification level. A Distributed Ledger Technology will require a very different payment agent.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/w3c/webpayments/issues/27#issuecomment-179277417