comments on the charter

Dear Web Payments IG members:

My apologies (especially to Adrian) for being late with this submission.

Here are my comments on the charter on behalf of NACS.
The document I'm commenting on is here:
http://w3c.github.io/webpayments-ig/latest/charters/payments-wg-charter.html

Best regards,
David

<snip/>

General comments
--------------------------
* Great job Adrian.
* We should choose either UK (standarise) or US (standardize) spellings.

"Note" at the top
-------------------------
Can we call the glossary something other than "Web Payments Interest Group's Glossary" and adopt a common glossary?

Suggestion:  call it "Unified Web Payments Activity Glossary"
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webpayments-ig/2015Jul/0063.html

1. Goals
-----------
* Shopping cart abandonment is a controversial benefit.  A large portion of mobile abandonment is simply
   price checking - a behavior not likely to stop.  I'm just not convinced it belongs in the very first goal.

* Need a more "merchant focused" goal, always customer service or saving money - e.g.
   "Standardized interfaces will reduce merchant costs through faster adoption, easier certification, and improved
   choice of provider."

* Suggest changing "on topics such as security" -> "covering topics such as security"

2. Scope
------------
* Change "on it's way to the payment processor" to "on its way to the payment processor."

* Suggest a slight edit, from
   "Unfortunately, these efforts all suffer from a lack of standardization of the high level flow of a Web payment,
    of the interfaces between the various parties, the user agent and the Web application, or of the messages
    exchanged between these parties over the Web."
    to
    "Unfortunately, these efforts all suffer from a lack of standardization:  standardization of the high level flow of a
    Web payment, of the interfaces between the various parties, of the user agent and the Web application, and of
    the messages exchanged between these parties over the Web."

* What does "Web Context" mean?  I don't think we're creating things inside and outside the web context, are
    we?  We need a way to describe  normal Web Server functionality (HTML, etc.) and Web Services.

* This sentence is hard for me to parse easily: "The interfaces between the payment schemes and the Web are
    via the user agent and the Web application, therefore the scope of the initial charter is focused on the
    interactions between these two components and the external actors that will interface directly with them."
    I think I understand what it's trying to say - I think "Web" in the first clause is really "Web context" (see note
    above).

* At "a message flow for the initiation..." the punctuation seems to be missing between "initiation" and
   "confirmation" - a small dot (might be a period) appears in my browser.

* Suggest rewording this sentence: "The group will aim to standarise..." to
   "To support use cases where messages are proxied between payer and payee, the group will aim to use
    technologies such as WebIDL APIs and Web Services in the classic REST pattern.  Such use will support
    varied implementations such as via a Web Browser, or between two agents using APIs."

2.1 Payment Flow
------------------------
* Is "credit push" really the dual of "debit pull?"  I haven't heard the latter term that much.

2.2 Security and Privacy Considerations
-----------------------------------------------------
* Suggest "...critical in payments and while the initial..." to "...critical in payments.  While the initial..."

* Suggested change: "...financial impact therefore message integrity and verification of all message originators..."
   to "...financial impact, the ability to prove message integrity and to verify all message originators..."

* Suggested change: "...payment process defined by the group should not disclose..." to "...payment process
   defined by the group should not require disclosure of..."

* Suggested change "participants identity" to "participants' identity".

* Suggested change "...without their explicit consent and the design..." to "...without their explicit consent.  The
   design..."

* I'm not sure the final clause "... , or that can be used across payment schemes." actually adds value.

3. Wallets
---------------
* What are "stand alone applications"?  I think this means "native application".

* Suggested change: "Some of the functionality..." to "Some of the capabilities..."

* Suggest change: "can be useful" to "is useful".

* Suggest change: "... this charter includes a definition to clarify the intent of this group." to "this charter includes
    the following definition to clarify the intent."

* Suggest change: "...holds..." to  "...holds and allows access to..."

* Suggest change: "...supports certain payment schemes..." to "...provides logic to support use of instruments in
   specific payment schemes..."

* Suggest change: "...may hold one or more balances of some digital asset that can be used to make payments."
   to "may hold digital assets, in the form of account balances, that can be used to make payments."

* In the phrase "...any conforming Web application running in a conforming user agent..." I'm not sure why
   "Web" is in there. It begs the question "what is a web application" and I think we avoid that by just saying
   Application.

* Suggest change: "... or by other aggregating services available to the user." to "...or by other services available
   to the user."

* Suggest change: " ... look for standardization opportunities..." to "...look for opportunities to standardize..."

4.1 Recommendndation-track deliverables
---------------------------------------------------------
* Suggest change: "Payment Term Description" to "Payment Terms Description"

* Repeated question: is "debit-pull" a standard term?  It's just not familiar to me, and seems easy to confuse
   with "debit".

* Suggest dropping "EMVCo" from tokenization.  Just plain tokenization should be investigated, including EMVCo.

5.1 W3C Groups
----------------------
* Suggest adding at least one WAI group to this list.

6. Participation
--------------------
* Suggest making the second sentence "Effective participation in Web Payments WG may consume .1FTE for each
   participant: for editors this commitment may be higher."  I'm not exactly sure what was intended here.

* Suggest giving a separate section in section 4 (deliverables) to "The Web Payments Working Group will allocate also the necessary resources for building Test Suites for each specification."




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Received on Sunday, 12 July 2015 19:15:25 UTC