Person-2-Person Payments

P2P payments have become a huge success in many countries, i.e. this is already established.
These systems are entirely proprietary and usually even secret.

Is that a problem? Not at all.

IF there is a problem worth solving (a very good task for an IG), I can only find one and that is the fact
that the majority (if not all) P2P payment systems are based on a "hub-and-spokes" model which in
spite of working global payment systems limits usage.

There are probably several issues around expanding P2P payments beyond a single hub and one of the
more obvious is the "eternal" problem locating your home-base.  If you solve this (the world is still waiting...)
for ordinary Web-payments, the very same method should be applicable to P2P payments.

Unfortunately there seems to be a usability snag with an expanded system because you need to introduce
an additional step which typically would be opening an e-mail application and clicking on a link.  The nice
thing about a possible standard is that this step could be integrated by the platform vendors by (for example)
searching for an attached icon with the name w3c-p2p-payment.png.  A bit of a hack but who cares if it
actually does the trick? This would of course be an entirely optional thing.

Yes, email addresses appear to be the most logical account identifier in a scalable P2P payment system.
Building on SMS would limit message length, adds costs, and exclude many platforms.

Using existing account identifiers is IMO not a viable option because they are bound to a single bank,
have no messaging capability, and are quite awkward to deal with for humans.

A very thorny issue is how to deal with (rather inform about) transaction fees since they depend on the "carrier".
IMO this is primarily a question for the sender since the receiver probably wants their $100 uncut.

WDYT?

Cheers,
Anders
performing his weekly update

Received on Sunday, 6 September 2015 08:53:01 UTC