Re: Financial consumer protection

On 12/14/2013 07:43 AM, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
> Can anyone orient me to anything that may have already been done on 
> either covering, or at least mapping, financial consumer protection 
> issues in the development of the webpayments standard?  Or is this
> yet to be addressed?

There are a number of consumer protection issues that we're concerned
about wrt. the set of specifications that this group is working on. A
number of them are outlined in the documents that you linked to. We tend
to only take action on the consumer protection items that can be
standardized and automated.

For example, we are creating a mechanism that would allow customers to
publicly rate merchants at an Internet-wide scale. Think of it like the
Amazon or eBay ratings systems, scaled to the size of the Web. This
would allow both merchants and customers to rate each other publicly,
which would hopefully lead to a better understanding of who you are
dealing with before you enter into a financial transaction with them.

There are a number of policy issues outlined in the papers you linked to
that we cannot really do anything about as a technical standardization
group. We're happy to discuss whether or not we can standardize
solutions for consumer protection, but in many cases regarding world
wide consumer protection policy issues, the law varies so wildly from
country to country that creating a standard solution is difficult, if
not impossible in the current regulatory environment.

In general, we are supportive of standardizing any technology that
reduces the inefficiencies in the global financial system such as
increasing pre-purchase information, reducing fraud, automating dispute
resolution as much as possible, bettering AML initiatives, and
increasing consumer information, empowerment, and education.

If you'd like to explore these issues in more detail, I'm happy to jump
on the phone with you and discuss further. Send me a private message if
you'd like to do that, as I'd like to get Consumers International more
involved in this work.

> I'm trying to write a preliminary background briefing on this issue
> for the consumer movement.

What is "this issue"? Web Payments? Online payments in general?

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Meritora - Web payments commercial launch
http://blog.meritora.com/launch/

Received on Monday, 16 December 2013 14:51:38 UTC