Web Payments and Donations

Web Payments Working Group,


INTRODUCTION

Donating to nonprofits, fundraising campaigns, charities, philanthropies, and disaster-relief efforts could be as simple of a user experience, across devices, as those for making purchases.

Purchases could be distinguished from donations. This would enhance recordkeeping so that people could more easily obtain their accumulated donations when preparing their taxes.

Below, three scenarios are indicated and followed by a brief technical discussion where a possibility is broached: adding an optional field to the “PaymentItem” interface of the Payment Request API for distinguishing between purchases and donations.


CONSIDERED SCENARIOS

A first scenario involves providing people with the means of making donations via the websites of nonprofits, fundraising campaigns, charities, philanthropies, and disaster-relief efforts.

A second scenario involves providing merchants with opportunities for their customers to make donations at points of sale, including by rounding up the amounts of their payments, such that these donations would be recorded and accumulated at customers’ banks, for purposes including later consultation during tax preparation.

A third scenario involves enabling donations within content-streaming applications, across devices, including smart televisions. With respect to smart televisions, both purchases and donations could be made by people utilizing their remote-control devices or natural-language voice commands.

Pertinent to this third scenario, one can envision: (1) new kinds of live-streaming and pre-recorded events, e.g., fundraising concerts or telethons, where people could simply make donations while viewing, including in order to access content, (2) new kinds of advertisements where people could make donations while viewing, and (3) new techniques for browsing nonprofits, fundraising campaigns, charities, philanthropies, and disaster-relief efforts.


DISCUSSION

Donations are tax-deductible and distinguishing between purchases and donations would benefit people by simplifying their recordkeeping processes, e.g., at their banks, so that people could more readily consult their accumulated donations while preparing their taxes.

How might one distinguish between a purchase and a donation using the Payment Request API? How might a payment method provider receive information about whether a payment was a purchase or a donation for purposes of recordkeeping?

For discussion, perhaps the “PaymentItem” interface ( https://www.w3.org/TR/payment-request/#paymentitem-dictionary ) could have an optional field added to it for indicating which payment items were donations?


CONCLUSION

Thank you for any comments or feedback on these ideas.


Best regards,
Adam Sobieski
http://www.phoster.com