Re: Informal poll: Identity use cases

How about these?

Use case: A person sends money to their friend using a memorable identifier
instead of a complex account number or URL. The memorable identifier is
translated to a destination account for the payment. The friend should be
able to easily communicate the identifier via voice, SMS or other short
message and the person should be able to easily remember it.

Use case: A person needs to pay a (large) merchant for a purchase. They
should be able to easily check that the destination is legitimate and, for
example, not the address of a spammer (e.g. payments@amazon.com is
preferable to a numerical account number and simply "Amazon" is preferable
to a longer identifier because some users may be fooled by something akin
to "amazon-payments@banksrus.com").

Use case: A charitable organization or cause posts a donation address on a
print advertisement. The address should be as memorable as a social media
username so prospective donors need not use QR codes or type full URLs,
potentially on a phone, to send a quick donation.

The point about not wanting an address to be discoverable is a good one but
I can't think of a way to write it as a use case. I'd also include that
people want to be able to transact without any of the details of those
transactions being made public beyond the sender, receiver, and any
relevant financial intermediaries.


On Mon, May 26, 2014 at 11:38 PM, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>wrote:

> 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/
>
>


-- 
Evan Schwartz
Developer + Technology Pioneer
Ripple Labs Inc.