Re: [w3c/payment-request] remove currencySystem member (#694)

> I think for v1, we should do ISO 4217 (get us past CR). But, in parallel (like starting today!), we should spin up our own currency registry (similar to the card brands registry) - and we should use that registry to coordinate with the ISO folks.

I wouldn't support that. Glad I asked before we issued a CfC!

The whole point of `currencySystem` was to not force users to use only currencies from a registry.

Currencies are not as rigid a concept as many would think. 

I can make up a currency today and have a community who are willing to trade in that currency online but I am prohibited from using PR until I get my currency on some registry and wait for browsers to add support for it?

There are currently over 1500 crypto-currencies listed at https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/

There are innumerable private loyalty points schemes that will want to ultimately allow their users to pay with their points.

This is a scaling problem we can't solve using a registry and I certainly don't think W3C wants to maintain it nor do you want to have to keep your browsers up to date with it.

I propose that for CR we make no mention of ISO 4217 and stick with the reference to https://www.ecma-international.org/ecma-402/4.0/index.html#sec-iswellformedcurrencycode which appears to allow any uppercase alpha code that is exactly 3 chars long and doesn't appear to compare the value to a set of allowed values.

Anyone that wants to use non-ISO 4217 currencies just needs to find an appropriate 3 letter code. (ISO 4217 allocated the X** namespace for exactly that use case, unfortunately not everyone in the crypto-currency world adhered to that). 

So, if I use the values XBT (Bitcoin), XRP, or ETH I should be able to use PR, but I would understand if the browser didn't have a nice currency symbol to show on the UI.


-- 
You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/w3c/payment-request/pull/694#issuecomment-375819441