Re: Updated Web Payments Working Group Charter - please indicate any serious concerns by Monday teleconference

> On Jul 26, 2015, at 4:22 PM, Telford-Reed, Nick <Nick.Telford-Reed@worldpay.com> wrote:
> 
> Ian
> 
> I'm quite worried about one of the changes in this latest draft as a result of the management team review, specifically in the Scope section.
> 
> The new text says: "focused on the interactions between the payment schemes and the user agent and Web application" which immediately rings alarm bells me for (and therefore I'd guess for acquirer/processors) - typically today there are no direct interactions between payers and the schemes themselves for (for example) card payments - the interactions would be either between the payer (consumer) and payee (merchant) or with the processor/acquirer/gateway on behalf of the payee (merchant).  I don't think there'll be much enthusiasm in the merchant services industry for a specification which sets out to disintermediate acquirer/processor/gateways in its Scope statement.
> 
> Can we change to "between payer user agent and payee Web application" or something similar?

Hi Nick,

We don’t want to disintermediate anyone. So thank you for raising awareness about text that might suggest we are (inadvertently) doing so.

The previous text was:

 "The programming interfaces between the payment schemes and the Web are usually at 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.”

The current text is:

 "The scope of the charter focuses on the interactions between payment schemes and the user agent and Web application, as well as the external actors that will interface directly with them.”

I don’t think that the text changed much, and (good news), I don’t think it changed a a direct result of W3M comments, only as a side effect of other changes.
So I think we can adjust it.

Let’s chat on Monday’s call about this adjustment.

> 
> Also - what's the motivation for specifying the number of participants anticipated for the working group ("expected to have 10 participants")? Doesn't that just unnecessarily tie us up in knots if we have more or fewer?

This number is an aspiration, not a constraint in practice. If we cannot find approximately 10 people interested in the work, then this is a signal that
we should heed. It does not cause anything to happen automatically (e.g., we are not prevented from publishing).

Ian


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Ian Jacobs <ij@w3.org>      http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
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