Strategy (the past) Re: Google payment plans

On 04/10/2014 06:54 AM, Anders Rundgren wrote:
> requires more than just technology; it requires a *strategy*.

Here are the problems this community has faced from the beginning, our
strategy to overcome those problems, and how the strategy fared (given
hindsight). It's a condensed list from this blog post:

http://manu.sporny.org/2014/dawn-of-web-payments/

Dates are provided beside each problem to demonstrate the flow of time.

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Problem: Sending/receiving money on the Web is broken. (2007)

Goal: Fix money on the Web through standardization.

Strategy: Build multiple technology demonstrations, get input on them
from organizations, send technology through W3C on standardization track.

Outcome: Failure. The technology demonstration were partially
successful, but hard to use. We failed to get good input from
organizations because we weren't "big enough". There was no way to start
experimental work like this at the time at W3C. So, we kept working on
the technology and trying to convince W3C to provide a place to work on
experimental technology. We latched onto RDFa as a potential technology
that could be used for Web Payments and helped it get standardized.

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Problem: Explosion of proprietary payment solutions. (2009)

Goal: Attempt to gather consensus around commonalities in payment solutions.

Strategy: Write specifications that support the most basic use cases
provided by the payment technologies in a way that would be compatible
with the Web. Build technology according to those specifications. Create
a community around the specifications and technologies. Try to get some
of the base technologies standardized.

Outcome: Partial failure. While the technology was getting better and
becoming more refined, the work wasn't happening in a large technical
community, so it was being largely overlooked. The community helped
create JSON-LD and take it through the W3C standardization process.

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Problem: Community involved with Web Payments too small. (2011)

Goal: Create a Web Payments community on the Web.

Strategy: Utilize the newly created W3C Community Groups to attract
members of the public, web technologists, payment industry
professionals, and government to the work and build momentum to have the
technologies standardized. Fly around the world talking to major banks,
financial companies, technology companies, and governments to educate
them about the existence of the group and its goals.

Outcome: Partial success. While involvement with the Web Payments CG was
small at first, it has picked up quickly over the last year or so and
now boasts a lively, if not chaotic, group of discussions related to
standardization around payments on the Web. 155 members and increasing
at a steady rate.

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Problem: There is still no official group that is capable of
standardizing payment-related technologies at W3C. (2013)

Goal: The creation of an official group at W3C to standardize payment
technologies.

Strategy: Convince W3C to hold a Web Payments Workshop based on feedback
that Web Payments CG community members have detected among the many
organizations that we know will participate. If the workshop is
successful, W3C will start the process to create one or more WGs to take
on the work.

Outcome: Success. W3C put on the workshop and the preliminary outcome is
very positive. A W3C Payments or Interest or Business group will be
created to clarify use cases, priorities, and desired outcomes.

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I've only picked a few large items, there have been many more smaller
problems that required a carefully planned strategy. While these
strategies have not always been so clearly spelled out, they
were there. Things aren't moving as fast as any of us would like, but
they are moving and there is progress.

The next email will outline our current set of problems and the
strategies going forward to attempt to address those problems.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: The Worlds First Web Payments Workshop
http://www.w3.org/2013/10/payments/

Received on Thursday, 10 April 2014 19:14:17 UTC