Re: Informal poll: Identity use cases

On 05/21/2014 01:58 PM, Evan Schwartz wrote:
> +1 to all of the use cases listed.
> 
> Was there any talk of a discovery use case? If I want to pay Manu,
> how do I find which digital entity I should initiate a transaction
> with? I'd like to find not only what payment methods he accepts but
> also some evidence that, for example, msporny@digitalbazaar.com 
> <mailto:msporny@digitalbazaar.com> is owned by the Manu Sporny I know
> as opposed to, say, manu.sporny@gmail.com
> <mailto:manu.sporny@gmail.com>.

No, there wasn't really a "discover a payment account from an identifier
use case". I think the underlying assumption we were making is that you
would exchange that information out of band (like via a chat channel, or
a request payment link).

There are a couple of questions that this raises:

What if the person you want to pay doesn't want to be discovered?

An email address would probably provide the best lookup mechanism today.
Should we allow other identifiers? Should the lookup value just be a
string? So "~Evan" and "evan@ripple.com" would both resolve to an identity?

Would the lookup resolve to an identity or a financial account?

So, it raises questions that don't have clear answers which probably
means that we should add the use case. Would you mind drafting a
sentence or two for the use case? Something like:

Use case: A person sends money to their friend using memorable
identifier instead of a complex account number or URL. The memorable
identifier is translated to a destination account for the payment.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: The Marathonic Dawn of Web Payments
http://manu.sporny.org/2014/dawn-of-web-payments/

Received on Tuesday, 27 May 2014 03:38:52 UTC