RE: New Web Payments Architecture document proposal

Hi all,

I recently started my participation in the WPIG and I am trying to get up to date with the matter at hand. One of the first documents I dove into is http://www.w3.org/TR/2016/UNOFFICIAL-web-payments-architecture-20160618/  

I have a number of questions - of course. I have been trying to find the answers by going through the information available, but I got a bit lost. And seeing that (for instance) 'last update' of https://www.w3.org/Payments/IG/wiki/Glossary is more than a year ago and some action points have a similar age (see for instance https://www.w3.org/Payments/IG/track/actions/open, the action on ISO and X9 ) I started fearing being on the wrong tracks. 
I did not want to annoy everybody with my ‘learning in’ but I now see no other way left as to plunge in at the deep end and apologize for the ripples in the pool.

Here are my questions – in random order:
- If I have comments on a document like http://www.w3.org/TR/2016/UNOFFICIAL-web-payments-architecture-20160618/ , how am I supposed to do that ? It would be nice if the document had line-numbers for reference but it doesn’t; copy and paste of segments in order to be able to refer to them – or perhaps even a total rewrite – presumably also is not the intention …. So please advise
- What is the (background) information this document is based on ? For example, a sentence like ‘Improve the interface experience for all stakeholders’ could refer to experience of a human user while interacting via the screen of a mobile phone, but it could equally mean the interface used ‘down there’ at the TCP/IP level …. Is there a layered structure – like the European EIF, or perhaps even the good old OSI 7 layer model – in which the statements can be positioned ?
- Is there a ‘Definition of Terms’ ? For example, the sentence ‘The requested mechanism to be used for processing the payment. Examples include: credit card, ACH, SEPA, and Bitcoin.’ seems to mix up legal framework (SEPA http://ec.europa.eu/finance/payments/sepa/index_en.htm ) with instrument (credit card) with concept / infrastructure (ACH), etc. By the way, ACH in US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Clearing_House ) is something rather different from an ACH like Equens (http://www.equens.com/aboutus/index.jsp ); in order to be able to formulate effective statements it is necessary to identify what terms exactly mean. And the Glossary I found does not help here ...
- is there a collection of ‘scenarios’ depicting payments (and their causes) in which the payments you are focusing on can be positioned ? I do not mean 'use cases' but instead a focus more concentrated on 'infrastructure'. I mean, there are many well established practices in the marketplace and it would help uptake and understanding if the mechanisms you depict could be easily positioned in them. If I see a sentence like ‘Specific information pertaining to the transaction. Examples include: price, transaction reference number, and items being purchased.’ then it makes me think more about an invoice than a payment actually and usually the invoice information is not repeated in the payment but a reference to the invoice itself is given instead. There are already standards for that ….
- electronic payments in Europe have very strong relations with electronic messages developed according to ISO 20022. I noticed the https://www.w3.org/Payments/IG/wiki/Main_Page/ProposalsQ42015/ISO20022_Harmonization_Task_Force - I strongly suggest you take a look at for instance 'ISO20022 for Dummies' (copy obtainable via http://www.iso20022.org ) to help understand the positioning of electronic messages for this purpose. These electronic messages find more and more acceptance also in other geographical areas on the globe. I think it is a valuable thought to consider building on them as well.
- I do not understand the use case given in 5. How does this relate to the current ‘common practice’ ? What is new and where are the overlaps ?

No doubt some of my questions are already answered somewhere – but forgive me in that case where I could not find the answers (yet). I really hope you can help me out.

Peter Potgieser

Business Innovation
Senior Consultant Industry Standards
e-mail: p.g.l.potgieser@planet.nl
GSM: + 31 6 301 803 99

-----Original Message-----
From: Manu Sporny [mailto:msporny@digitalbazaar.com] 
Sent: Friday, June 17, 2016 9:18 PM
To: Web Payments WG
Cc: Web Payments IG
Subject: New Web Payments Architecture document proposal

Hi all,

Now that the Browser API has settled down a bit and we've had some time to establish a rhythm for the group, it might be good to (very briefly) revisit the architecture document to make sure we're all still reading off of the same page. I have to do this anyway for the HTTP API, so decided to do the architecture document at the same time.

What follows is a high-level, very terse outline of the architecture as it stands right now:

https://w3c.github.io/webpayments/proposals/wparch/

This need also came up recently during an internal company meeting as well - we have a few new hires that would like to get involved in the Web Payments work, but when they asked for a high-level overview of the architecture we couldn't point them to a simple, up-to-date document.

While we're aware of AdrianHB's good work in this area (the wiki page), we wanted something a tad less involved, less text, more images, more up to date, and something that was a lead into our other specs.

In doing so, I strived to:

* Not put anything controversial in there
* Be terse and to the point, the document should be a 10 minute read
  tops.
* Be more abstract than concrete - thus, the document really does talk
  about architecture and message flow, not implementation details
  or specifics. It's an approximation and is not specific in certain
  areas on purpose.
* Provide it as a jumping off point into all of our specs (which
  happens toward the bottom of the spec).

Please review and provide your thoughts.

I'd like to get this into the group as an ED soon and publish it as a FPWD in July/Aug (possibly making a decision to do so at the F2F).

This is a request to spend 5 minutes on it during the next telecon.

-- manu

--
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny) Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: The Web Browser API Incubation Anti-Pattern http://manu.sporny.org/2016/browser-api-incubation-antipattern/


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Received on Friday, 24 June 2016 14:25:32 UTC