Re: Linking Value Networks

Hi Adrian,

Great question.  Although this has not been fully fleshed out in the current document, the notion that Payment Agents can act as gateways or as relays to other Payment Agents actually allows for the use case you describe. What needs to be called out is that currency conversion is a specific feature that Payment Agents could support. For example a Payer could choose directly to use a service which implements Payment Agent and offers the ability to convert currency. Conversely, a Payee could use a service which implements Payment Agent and allows for receipt from other currencies.  This probably warrants some discussion on the group call to review more background, but at this point I don’t think it runs counter to the core concept of a web of Payment Agents.

Thanks for raising!

Pat

From: Adrian Hope-Bailie <adrian@hopebailie.com<mailto:adrian@hopebailie.com>>
Date: Thursday, May 7, 2015 at 8:33 AM
To: Web Payments IG <public-webpayments-ig@w3.org<mailto:public-webpayments-ig@w3.org>>
Subject: Linking Value Networks
Resent-From: <public-webpayments-ig@w3.org<mailto:public-webpayments-ig@w3.org>>
Resent-Date: Thursday, May 7, 2015 at 8:33 AM

In working on the manifesto and the architecture document it occurred to me that we (or maybe it's just me) may be missing an essential feature in the payment agent model.

If our payment agents are expected to talk to one another to negotiate the terms of a payment, including the choice of payment scheme, then what do we do when there is no common scheme between the participants?

Does the payment agent give up and say: "Sorry Alice, you can't pay Bob he only accepts Visa, Bitcoin and ACH and you can only pay via MasterCard and XRP, transaction aborted"?

If so then it seems we aren't solving anything. Our vision for inter-connected value networks falls flat if our payment agents can only facilitate a payment within existing closed networks.

Would I be correct in saying we need to consider that in many scenarios there will be one or more intermediaries that "bridge" the two networks by being plugged into both? How do we fit these brokers/intermediaries into our architecture?

I think they are also payment agents of some sort but who do they interface with? The sender, receiver, both? And, how does the payment flow between Alice and Bob play out when this intermediary is required? At what point do their agents say, "Oh dear, we don't have a common payment scheme we can use, let's call Fred to act as a broker between your MasterCard and my Visa accounts".

I'd like to discuss this on the call today as I think we need to figure it out and put it in the document.

Adrian


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