Re: Mozilla comments on Payments WG charter

I've made some proposed edits to the charter (to address some,
although not yet all, of these comments) at:

https://github.com/dbaron/webpayments-ig/commits/gh-pages
which can be viewed as the completed edited charter at:
http://dbaron.github.io/webpayments-ig/latest/charters/payments-wg-charter.html
or as a diff against the current draft at:
http://services.w3.org/htmldiff?doc1=http%3A%2F%2Fw3c.github.io%2Fwebpayments-ig%2Flatest%2Fcharters%2Fpayments-wg-charter.html&doc2=http%3A%2F%2Fdbaron.github.io%2Fwebpayments-ig%2Flatest%2Fcharters%2Fpayments-wg-charter.html
(though if more edits are made to the current draft, they'll show up
in that diff as being undone until I merge them).

-David

On Thursday 2015-09-17 12:01 -0400, L. David Baron wrote:
> I thought it's worth sharing here the comments I submitted as part
> of the AC review of the payments WG charter, from
> https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-new-work/2015Sep/0005.html
> 
> -David
> 
> ======
> 
> I'd like to ensure that it's possible to build a Web browser that
> can make payments using the deliverables of the working group, as
> they are actually deployed, without also building a payment
> processing system (e.g., building the relationships with banks,
> etc., that have been necessary for Apple to build Apple Pay) or
> having a business partnership with somebody who has done that.
> Doing this seems possible technically, but it requires participation
> from issuing banks or payment systems in order to register payment
> instruments (and run whatever systems are required by that
> registration).
> 
> I don't think the deliverables and scope described in the current
> charter are precise enough to tell whether that's the case.  I
> regret not previously pushing back harder against the charter being
> unclear and using terms (like "digital wallet") that abstract away
> what is actually happening.
> 
> I think both the scope of the charter and the deliverables need to
> be clear about what the working group is actually being chartered to
> build.  Who are the parties involved in the Web payments ecosystem,
> which of the group's deliverables apply to each party, and are all
> of those parties actually willing to make this happen in the way
> that the charter describes?  (A diagram could be helpful here.)  Or,
> to state this concern differently: I think the charter is not clear
> enough about what it proposes to build for the AC to tell who the
> parties needed to build that technology are, and whether they're
> involved in the work.
> 
> I think (although I'm not sure) that the relevant parties to involve
> in order to build an open payments system are, for credit card
> payments, the issuing banks.  (An alternative might be the payment
> systems like Visa, MasterCard, etc.)  So the charter would need to
> be clear about which parts of the proposed system are infrastructure
> at the issuing banks, so that in their charter review, those banks
> are able to understand which part of the system they are expected to
> provide, and to comment on the charter based on that understanding.
> 
> 
> In slightly more detail:
> 
> I think the Scope section of the current charter draft could be
> interpreted in different ways.  It's not clear which communications
> between parties in the payment process are part of the standardized
> message flow, and which are part of the proprietary "delivery
> mechanism".  Nor is it clear which common delivery mechanisms will
> be standardized.
> 
> The use of the concept of "digital wallet" doesn't seem to add
> anything, since it is described only as a container for payment
> instruments, of which a user may have more than one.  The
> partitioning of payment instruments into digital wallets is
> completely undefined, as is the relationship of digital wallets to
> concepts that exist in an implementation.
> 
> The deliverables section doesn't really say what is being delivered.
> The first three bullets are goals, the middle three bullets are
> messages between unspecified parties (in which the term "digital
> wallet service" appears out of nowhere, undefined), and the last
> three bullets are use cases.
> 
> ======
> 
> -- 
> 𝄞   L. David Baron                         http://dbaron.org/   𝄂
> 𝄢   Mozilla                          https://www.mozilla.org/   𝄂
>              Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
>              What I was walling in or walling out,
>              And to whom I was like to give offense.
>                - Robert Frost, Mending Wall (1914)



-- 
𝄞   L. David Baron                         http://dbaron.org/   𝄂
𝄢   Mozilla                          https://www.mozilla.org/   𝄂
             Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
             What I was walling in or walling out,
             And to whom I was like to give offense.
               - Robert Frost, Mending Wall (1914)