Re: From W3C's eCommerce Interest Group of the 1990s to Today's Web Payments Discussion

Hi Joseph,
I only have a 18 year perspective on standardization in the payment and EC space.

It is important realizing that W3C is only one of quite a bunch of SDOs and that W3C
to date have been much more successful with basic technology than with applications.

If we then enter into the world payments there is a veritable desert out there
with dead payment standards and initiatives.

One of the problems is that there's no documented interest among leading banks
to standardize anything in open.  The Web Payment Workshop delegates may differ
but I never saw any bank folks in W3C's WebCrypto although it was said that one
of the use-cases were high-value transactions.

There's also a lack of openness within the W3C itself.  The current W3C SE API
standardization effort (which is highly related to payments) is mum on the fact
that SIM-cards are owned by operators which makes such a standard inaccessible
for probably some 99% of the potential market.

Personally, I stick to business-model-neutral "nuts and bolts" technology.
The challenge is understanding "just enough" of the application space without
getting lost there :-)

Compared to the "good old days", standardization has become much more difficult
since it is challenged by companies like Google who can do whatever they want.
The tempo has also increased while automatic updates reduce the need for "perfection".
Open source has turned out to be a strong alternative to real standards.

Anders' law of standardization:
Innovation is a fuzzy process.  Standardization is fuzzy but in another way.
Do not combine these activities unless everybody is prepared for a rocky ride.

Cheers,
Anders

On 2014-04-07 13:15, Joseph Potvin wrote:
> Further to the wrap-up discussion about the creating on an Interest Group
> http://www.w3.org/2013/10/payments/minutes/2014-03-25-wrapup/
> 
> Does anyone on these lists have the "two-decades view" of W3C
> involvement with this topic?
> http://www.w3.org/ECommerce/
> http://www.w3.org/TR/EC-related-activities
> http://www.w3.org/ECommerce/Micropayments/
> http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-jepi
> 
> Three questions:
> 
> 1. What happened to those original efforts towards a W3C Specification
> on eCommerce that would have included specifications on web payments?
> 
> 2. What should we learn from substance and fate of those earlier efforts?
> 
> 3. Is there a need to "start" a new IG?  Or might the W3C eCommerce IG
> just re-convene, update its charter, and carry on?
> 
> Joseph Potvin
> 
> 
> On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 11:51 AM, Stephane Boyera <boyera@w3.org> wrote:
>> Dear All,
>>
>> Thanks to the great help from the Web Payments Community Group and Manu
>> Sporny, we just published a new cleaned version of the minutes of the
>> workshop at
>> http://www.w3.org/2013/10/payments/minutes/
>> The agenda with links to slides and presentations is available at
>> http://www.w3.org/2013/10/payments/agenda
>>
>> We are planning to circulate a draft report for your comments in the next 10
>> days.
>>
>> Best
>> Stephane
>> --
>> Stephane Boyera        stephane@w3.org
>> W3C                +33 (0) 6 73 84 87 27
>> BP 93
>> F-06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex,
>> France
>>
>

Received on Monday, 7 April 2014 14:19:11 UTC