Re: Linking Value Networks

You make a good point - but to address this concern it requires more than
just a technical solution, it requires some business innovation, but it can
be addressed much in the same way that Square and PayPal can helped in
areas where the payee is too small and not credit worthy enough to directly
accept credit card payments.

On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 9:33 AM, Adrian Hope-Bailie <adrian@hopebailie.com>
wrote:

> 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
>