Wallets

While I originally supported the motion to avoid the word wallet I think it
is doing more harm than good. I think we need to provide a definition of
the thing that performs the functions we think a wallet requires for it to
be a useful part of the v1 recommendations of the WG and stick to that
definition and call it... a wallet.

To that end, and in keeping with what I believe to be the accepted scope of
v1 of the WG's work I define a wallet as being what many call a
"passthrough wallet". It is analogous to a real-world physical wallet in
that it holds a set of payment instruments and provides a standard
interface for external applications to those instruments. It may also hold
value (cash) but this should be accessible via the interface in the same
way as any other payment instrument (i.e. The calling application addresses
the stored value in the same way as it addresses stored payment
instruments). In other words a digital wallet does what a physical wallet
does so it seems sensible to call it a wallet.

The fact that Apple have renamed Passbook to Wallet should be a hint that
this is a good idea:
http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/08/apple-rebrands-passbook-to-wallet/

Where the analogy drifts a little is in the digital context when the wallet
performs some of the functions that the wallet holder performs in the
physical world such as selection of payment instrument or even
online-online functions like getting tokens to use instead of real card
numbers. I'm still not convinced that is a good enough reason not to call
this a wallet and make everyone's life easier.

Further, a wallet should be capable of being stored in another wallet if
that wallet chooses to act as an aggregator of wallets (i.e. The interface
into wallets should be designed to accommodate such a use case). This is
important in preventing scheme owners from making it difficult for wallet
vendors to incorporate the scheme into their wallets. i.e. There is no
incentive to provide a wallet for only your scheme and make your scheme
difficult to integrate into wallets as other wallets will simply
incorporate your wallet into theirs.

That said, it is important that we define how much the W3C can do to
promote openness and how much we can do to enforce it.

I am going to word a version of the PAWG charter using wallets for clarity
and see how that sits with everyone.