Limitations of "Push" payment schemes

Dear All,

When I first begin looking into payments I (without really thinking too much about it), came up with a "Push" payment system. Push indeed has certain undeniable qualities like not exposing customer data to merchants as well as supporting bank-specific authentication methods.

However, if the goal is supporting a wider range of payment scenarios, "Push" doesn't seem to be the optimal approach.  So far I have identified the following disadvantages:

- Considerably more complex "Wallets" which have to deal with two independent but cooperating channels and unspecified user-authentication will most likely lead to each bank rolling their own

- Incompatible with automated gas stations, subscriptions, bookings etc. which all depend on some kind of "pull" method

- Adds dependency on Internet connectivity also for local payments

It is also worth keeping in mind that "pull" payments is the de-facto standard for local card-payments so it obviously works.

Anders Rundgren
Principal, WebPKI.org

Received on Friday, 26 August 2016 05:16:12 UTC