Plan for reintroducing addresses to Payment Request

Dear Web Payments Working Group,

During TPAC 2022, we briefly discussed [1] re-introducing addresses (for billing and shipping purposes) into Payment Request API. As a reminder, we removed them before advancing Payment Request to Recommendation in order to resolve several issues raised against the specification.

Both Chromium and Webkit browsers originally shipped with support for addresses and they continue to support those features. The implementers have requested that we re-align the specification with implementations.

To that end, the editors have developed a plan to republish a draft of Payment Request on the W3C "technical reports" (TR) page that includes address support:

1) Re-publish the Recommendation as a Candidate Recommendation Snapshot [3]. We should be able to do this with minimal effort.  This will be called "Payment Request" (and not "Payment Request 1.1"; we plan to drop the version number.).

2) Add back the small set of non-editorial changes that are part of the Payment Request 1.1 Working Draft [4], and add back support for addresses. This will be a Candidate Recommendation Draft [5], and before the Working Group can advance that specification to Recommendation, we will need to secure reviews of the restored features according to the W3C Process.

Instead of defining payment-specific address components within Payment Request, we now plan to refer to definitions of those components in the Contact Picker API [6]. Indeed, Contact Picker was created because standardized addresses on the Web are useful outside of payments; the text of Contact Picker comes from the original Payment Request API, but with some name changes.

When we removed addresses from Payment Request we closed a number of issues [7]. Marcos Caceres and I have reopened some of those issues in the Payment Request repo and transferred the rest to the Contact Picker API issues list (except for issue 548, which we left closed because it can already be handled outside the API). We would expect to (re-)discuss these issues --especially with the Privacy Interest Group and Internationalization Working Group-- before requesting to advance the revised Payment Request to Recommendation.

Here are the anticipated changes to the specification:

1) Publish a Candidate Recommendation Snapshot based on the original Payment Request API Recommendation (08 September 2022) but with these editorial changes:
   https://github.com/w3c/payment-request/compare/c37921bcf85b82c1dcc021d11c05a7bc735d2de6..733013638d2eea4e1a53ba482602d5e6361441f1

   Note: there is one bug fix in that set of changes; current implementations behave according to this bug fix and so it is included in the changes from REC:
   https://github.com/w3c/payment-request/pull/1005

2) Publish a Candidate Recommendation Draft with the following changes:

  - Relax the user activation requirement (already in Payment Request 1.1):
    https://github.com/w3c/payment-request/pull/1009

    See also a related (new) issue 1022 regarding potential improvements to the specification around the user activation language:
    https://github.com/w3c/payment-request/issues/1022

    In short, we expect to update the informative note about user activation as part of adding it to a Candidate Recommendation snapshot.

  - Add back the original text around addresses, updated to leverage the Contact Picker API:
    https://github.com/w3c/payment-request/pull/996

In addition, we are restoring corresponding tests [8].

I'd like to review this plan briefly at the 15 February WPWG call, after which I would expect to issue a Call for Consensus to seek Working Group support.

Let me know if you have any questions. Thank you, and many thanks to the
editors.

Ian

[1] https://www.w3.org/2023/09/28-wpwg-minutes.html
[2] https://www.w3.org/TR/2022/REC-payment-request-20220908/
[3] https://www.w3.org/2023/Process-20231103/#publishing-crrs
[4] https://www.w3.org/TR/2024/WD-payment-request-1.1-20240205/
[5] https://www.w3.org/2023/Process-20231103/#publishing-crud
[6] https://w3c.github.io/contact-picker/
[7] https://github.com/w3c/payment-request/pull/955
[8] https://github.com/web-platform-tests/wpt/pull/44409

--
Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>
https://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs/
Tel: +1 917 450 8783

Received on Tuesday, 13 February 2024 20:33:12 UTC