RE: Discussion - Payment APIs: others are thinking about this problem space, too

Hello all,

Indeed, I see the developments in this space largely complementary to the 'UPA' TF. There are a few points I think we can learn from that already:
- individual protocols for carrying out payments will come up anyway, and they will come from sources much deeper involved into payment/ merchant interactions than the W3C usually is
- Any approach from individual company or group of companies should be scrutinized as to whether they will open up another silo or whether they can be integrated in a UPA

Examples: VISA and MasterCard individually introduced ways to integrate loyalty functions with their respective credit cards. This created new - although 'beefed-up' - silos, restricting the use of certain loyalty programs with certain payment instrument. IMO these need to be supported by a legacy-proof UPA design, but inherently should open up a way to let the user and the merchant decide freely what combinations of payment and loyalty the want to use/ support in a given transaction.

The solution from our side must, thus, be to aggregate payments and loyalty in the UPA design, leaving it to payment services and loyalty services respectively to integrate themselves into the agent. This should give the user more transparency and give everyone in the ecosystem more control. While not forcing anyone into the approach, these arguments should favor the more open (often de-composed) options over time.

Compare the T-Labs 'architecture slide #15 here: https://www.w3.org/Payments/IG/wiki/images/a/a5/141027_T-Labs_Wallet_TPAC_1_1.pdf. Discrete Items for payment and loyalty would be represented by individual meta-data sets, making the whole process clear to all involved parties. If a combined payment/ loyalty function was implemented in a functional module, things may well be handled in the respective backends - delivering a nice and 'tangible' experience for the user would, however, be much harder to do.

Does that make sense to everybody?

Cheers,
	Jörg

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephane Boyera [mailto:boyera@w3.org] 
Sent: Freitag, 14. November 2014 08:13
To: David Ezell; public-webpayments-ig@w3.org; public-webpayments-comments@w3.org
Subject: Re: Discussion - Payment APIs: others are thinking about this problem space, too

The article of payxintl is very interesting.
As we can all see, the domain is moving quickly. This is a great momentum for the group. At the same time, it is also more pressure on us to move at the pace of the industry.

It is important to highlight not only the importance of API, but the importance of open standardized API that can create a level playing field for all actors.

In all cases, I think we have to move further down and look into which API for what purpose, carrying which data etc.
The first diagram we put on the payment agent task force is a very very first step in that direction. I believe we need to see if we can build a consensus on such a high-level view, and then start to look into each individual module that will help identify the needs in terms on API.

steph

Le 13/11/2014 20:54, David Ezell a écrit :
> Dear IG:
>
> Here is a recent article on APIs in payment[1].  The point is that others are thinking about this problem, too.
>
> As I see it, there are two levels of API with which we are concerned:
> 1) Interfaces for the "payment agent"[2] - probably WebIDL defined interfaces.
> 2) RESTful web services for other as yet TBD goals.
>
> Examples of this second group would include discovery of payment services, potentially with dynamically changing API components.  Just one idea.
> For discussion specific to area #1 be sure to use the [payment_agent] tag at the beginning of your subject line.
>
> We need to generate some concrete ideas and get the ball rolling.
>
> Best regards,
> David Ezell
>
> [1] 
> http://payxintl.com/payments-apis-the-last-mile-to-realising-the-holy-
> grail-in-payments/ [2] 
> https://www.w3.org/Payments/IG/wiki/Payment_Agent_Task_Force
>
> "Energy is more efficient than efficiency." - attributed to FDR
>
>
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Received on Friday, 14 November 2014 10:15:22 UTC