Re: Web Payment Request Spec Proposal

On 07/02/2015 04:08 AM, Anders Rundgren wrote:
> The described API appears to be very high-level (abstract) and is 
> supposed to hook into some browser underpinnings that does the
> actual work, right?

... or a polyfill, which would be the more sane path for version 1, IMHO.

> However, this kind of API (which probably is the only way to achieve
>  consensus...), doesn't really buy you anything since the 
> underpinnings still aren't addressed.

The underpinnings don't matter as long as it achieves what the spec says
it should do. This isn't as hard to do as it may seem, for example,
here's an example of the Identity Credentials API polyfill:

https://github.com/digitalbazaar/credentials-polyfill/blob/master/README.md

This is implemented in an R&D prototype today:

https://authorization.io/

... and will be going into production systems later this year.

The Web Payments API polyfill would follow a similar path.

> Maybe the idea is that the Web Payment Architecture WG should perform
> core R&D?

No, it shouldn't do that. MozPay, the Web Payments CG, and the
Credentials CG have already done quite a bit of R&D on this front.

> As I have shown, there's another, and much more flexible route for 
> energizing Secure, Convenient, and Distributed payments on the Web. 
> That it builds on technology [partially] already available in 
> "Chrome" doesn't seem like a disadvantage.

Native messaging has to do w/ communicating w/ native apps, which is a
/part/ of the solution, not the entire solution. We're going to have a
mixture of cloud-based and native-based payment software. We're still
going to need an in-browser API at some point, implemented via a
polyfill at first, and then adopted by the browsers in time (but
immediate adoption is not necessary for us to achieve some level of
preliminary success). You can't solve this problem by /only/ using
native messaging.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Web Payments: The Architect, the Sage, and the Moral Voice
https://manu.sporny.org/2015/payments-collaboration/

Received on Thursday, 2 July 2015 19:35:12 UTC