RE: X9 Review of the FPWD of Use Cases by Web Payments IG

Thanks Claudia:
I'm forwarding to the public list so I can reference it into the agenda.

Best regards,
David

From: Swendseid, Claudia [mailto:claudia.swendseid@mpls.frb.org]
Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 2015 5:45 PM
To: Adler, Patrick; David Ezell; Erik Anderson (eanderson20@bloomberg.net); Adrian Hope-Bailie (adrian@ripple.com); Manu Sporny (msporny@digitalbazaar.com)
Cc: 'Ian Jacobs'
Subject: RE: X9 Review of the FPWD of Use Cases by Web Payments IG

Hello everyone,
I've adapted Pat's comments into a "memo" format response to Steve Stevens.  I suggest we review and finalize on our Monday IG call so that we can share a draft and elicit more comments from the broader public list and subsequently to provide our response to Steve timely.  Note that I'm assuming based on other comments received, the list of bullets responding to X9 may increase.

DRAFT Response
Date:               June XX, 2015
To:                   Steve Stevens, Executive Director, Accredited Standards Committee X9
From:              W3C Web Payments Interest Group (WPIG)
Subject:           Response to X9's Comments on WPIG's Use Cases and Capabilities Document
We appreciate the time and effort that X9 members to review the Web Payments Interest Group's (WPIG) Use Cases document.  We agree that this W3C effort is an ambitious one.  We also think it is a necessary and strategic effort given the increasing integration of the Web with worldwide commerce and the Web's access to billions of people.  The ambitious nature of this effort underscores the need for collaboration among standards development organizations such as W3C and ASC X9 - a collaboration that we hope to foster.

Several other points raised in your comments deserve clarification and feedback from us.

*         You suggest that our effort might be better expressed as "Web Commerce" versus "Web Payments."  This is consistent with other feedback we have been received on our use cases and capabilities work.  As you rightly observe, several aspects of what we are working on (e.g., trust, credentials, digital signatures, loyalty programs, etc.) extend beyond a payment transaction and are applicable to other standards efforts that may not even involve payments.  For example, credentials are needed to facilitate entitlements and digital signature constructs could easily extend to smart contracts and ownership of Web assets and information.  So, we will consider how we can better address the point that you and others have made.

*         Your feedback on roles, sequencing and information flows and suggestion that "Standardizing the vocabulary and the protocols for exchanging discrete segments of the payment mechanics would be of immense value" is helpful.  These concepts have been difficult to describe satisfactorily in the capabilities document. For example, depending on the "direction" of the payment interaction (e.g., payer initiated, payee initiated, account provider initiated, etc.), different sequences and flows result, generating a large number of combinations and permutations of complete commerce flows.  Thus, your suggestion to focus on discrete segments is intriguing.

*         Finally, your comment on the all-encompassing nature of the work has been raised in our own group's discussions. One of the challenges we have been wrestling with is how to determine and focus on an initial set of features and capabilities to standardize, while at the same time encouraging participation of organizations in the WPIG who may want to drive other capabilities forward. Your suggestion of breaking the work down by discrete segments and capabilities may help address this challenge as it may help de-couple standardization work streams that need to proceed at different paces and using different processes.
We look forward to continuing to work with the X9 community on this important effort.

END OF DRAFT


Claudia S. Swendseid
Senior Vice President
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
Phone: 612-204-5448
Cell: 612-655-7523
Email:  Claudia.swendseid@mpls.frb.org<mailto:Claudia.swendseid@mpls.frb.org>







From: Adler, Patrick
Sent: Monday, June 01, 2015 10:17 PM
To: David Ezell; Swendseid, Claudia; Erik Anderson (eanderson20@bloomberg.net<mailto:eanderson20@bloomberg.net>); Adrian Hope-Bailie (adrian@ripple.com<mailto:adrian@ripple.com>); Manu Sporny (msporny@digitalbazaar.com<mailto:msporny@digitalbazaar.com>)
Cc: 'Ian Jacobs'
Subject: Re: X9 Review of the FPWD of Use Cases by Web Payments IG

Hi David,

Thank you for sharing Steve's feedback here. I won't be able to be on the call tomorrow due to a conflict with another meeting that I have, but I wanted to at least take a moment to share some of my thoughts on the feedback that I thought might be helpful for the group.


  *   With regard to the feedback on Web Commerce vs. Web Payments, this is consistent with other feedback/comments that have been received as part of the capabilities work - namely in that several aspects of what we are working on (trust, credentials, loyalty, etc) extend beyond payments and are broadly applicable to other standards efforts that may occur along with or as a result of the work on payments.  For example, credentials are needed to facilitate entitlements and digital signature constructs could easily extend into smart contracts and assertions as to the origin/ownership of assets and information on the web.  When I first heard that feedback  (in the other forums) it stuck with me, and seeing it here from someone close to payments standardization work, suggests an even stronger need to consider how we might incorporate that line of thinking.
  *   Specific to the feedback in the second and fourth paragraphs on packaging of information and implied sequencing of payment phases,  the state machine view concept and focus on  "Standardizing the vocabulary and the protocols for exchanging discrete segments of the payment mechanics would be of immense value" expresses something that has been difficult to describe in the capabilities document but has (I believe) the same roots as the role matrix that we had in the document recently.  The key concern is that depending on the direction of the interactions (whether something is payer initiated, payee initiated, account provider initiated, etc) there are number of different sequences that could result.  Because this results in a large number of combinations and permutations of complete commerce flows, I think that the suggestion to focus on discrete segments in isolation is worth considering.
  *   Finally, the comment on the all-encompassing nature of the work also has some parallels to recent discussions on the capabilities/architecture calls around decomposing/arranging the work by likely alignment to working groups and other standards body.  One of the challenges we have been wrestling with is how to indicate the initial set of features/capabilities to standardize, while at the same time still being able to encourage/allow for participation of organizations who may want to drive other capabilities forward.  I believe the suggestion of focusing on discrete segments of mechanics is a good one - specifically that benefits of breaking the work down by  discrete segments and capabilities it would likely allow for looser coupling of standardization work streams and orthogonality between different functional capabilities  (ex. credentials) which may necessarily need to proceed at a different pace/process than other parts of the work (ex. loyalty).
I'm interested in hearing others thoughts - I hope my comments are helpful for the discussion tomorrow,

Pat

From: David Ezell <David_E3@VERIFONE.com<mailto:David_E3@VERIFONE.com>>
Date: Monday, June 1, 2015 at 4:14 PM
To: "Swendseid, Claudia" <claudia.swendseid@mpls.frb.org<mailto:claudia.swendseid@mpls.frb.org>>, "Erik Anderson (eanderson20@bloomberg.net<mailto:eanderson20@bloomberg.net>)" <eanderson20@bloomberg.net<mailto:eanderson20@bloomberg.net>>, "Adrian Hope-Bailie (adrian@ripple.com<mailto:adrian@ripple.com>)" <adrian@ripple.com<mailto:adrian@ripple.com>>, Patrick Adler <patrick.adler@chi.frb.org<mailto:patrick.adler@chi.frb.org>>, "Manu Sporny (msporny@digitalbazaar.com<mailto:msporny@digitalbazaar.com>)" <msporny@digitalbazaar.com<mailto:msporny@digitalbazaar.com>>
Cc: 'Ian Jacobs' <ij@w3.org<mailto:ij@w3.org>>
Subject: X9 Review of the FPWD of Use Cases by Web Payments IG

All:
We asked X9 to review our work.  Steve Stevens condensed the reviews into the following points.  For the most part, I think these are healthy comments, and I agree with a few of them.

I would like this smaller group to take a look before we go public.  I would like to circulate this to the public list no later than COB Wednesday.

We can also discuss this topic on tomorrow's External Reviews TF meeting.

Best regards,
David

<snip/>

As a general statement, the W3C effort appears to be quite ambitious.  This matches the nature of the opportunity / gap while at the same time will likely introduce a number of challenges to the timely completion of the envisioned work.  The first and perhaps greatest challenge is the scope of the envisioned problem space.  The titling is current "Web Payments" but perhaps would be better expressed as "Web Commerce".   Many of the use cases appear to express considerations that extend beyond the domain of transfer of value between two parties and well into the overarching mechanics of the complete transaction.



There does not appear to be an articulation of the nature of the specific end work product.  The closest statement is in the abstract "Guided by these use cases, the W3C Web Payments Interest Group plans to derive architecture and associated technology requirements to integrate payments into the Open Web Platform."  These use cases as articulated probably provide a reasonable range of typical, non-commercial, eCommerce activity that could be used to validate a proposed architecture.  However, as articulated they express roles, sequencing, as well as information flow.  It would seem logical to focus on information flow and not (perhaps) to express the method of instantiation.  If the proposed approach is to actually describe a constrained solution space for the exchange of value between parties, the market is likely not mature enough to accept this all-encompassing packaging.  The focus should be on packaging of information and the controls / expectations that would be associated with the mechanics for the exchange of said information.



Within the terminology, the abstraction and simplification that is expressed seems reasonable.  There are two exceptions that might be worth raising: (1) Entity; (2) Payment Instrument.  Entity raises different complications depending upon the nature of the transaction.  The bulk of the examples appear to focus on a commercial transaction between a consumer and a business in exchange for goods/services.  The effort might be well served but stating an intent to focus on that space due to complications that emerge when one starts pondering the regulatory nuances that emerge between commercial contract law, consumer protection, etc.  Within ISO 12812 we settled on a definition of Payment Instrument that ended up stressing the construct that contained the information to support payment initiation (sufficient to result in settlement) rather than the actual mechanics the value transfer.  This supports separating value stores, processing networks, and various tokens in the conversations.   It seems like the current W3C definition might be a bit of a challenge on this front.



The discussion of payment phases appears to imply sequencing.  In order to enable web payments, the effort would be better of focusing on a state machine view where certain classes of information are needed to enable certain mechanics within the envisioned processes that result in the ultimate exchange of value.  Standardizing the vocabulary and the protocols for exchanging discrete segments of the payment mechanics would be of immense value.  The articulation of a complete solution likely limits the applicability to only a narrow segment of the complete problem space.  That said, if the intent is to only deal with 80% of the payments transaction volume (not dollar value) than a focus on typical retail narrow case models may be sufficient.

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