Vague "Digital Wallet" terminology (was: Re: W3C officially launches Web Payments initiative)

On 10/16/2014 08:52 AM, Anders Rundgren wrote:
> On 2014-10-15 17:30, Manu Sporny wrote:
> 
> "The Interest Group will first focus on digital wallets, which many 
> in industry consider an effective way to reduce fraud and improve 
> privacy by having users share sensitive information only with payment
> providers, rather than merchants"
> 
> An awesome but also incredibly difficult task.

Keep in mind that just about everyone that read that sentence thought it
said something different. "Digital wallet" is a loaded marketing term
that means many different things to many different people. This is why
we've been arguing against that terminology for a long while in this
community. Using the term "Digital Wallet" to refer to the work that
we're doing is about as clear as using the term "Cloud" to define the
work that the W3C is doing.

For example, many in the mobile industry think of the "digital wallet"
as something that has stuff that lives inside of a secure element on the
mobile phone. Industry players that have cloud-based financial services
think of "digital wallets" as something that doesn't have most of the
functionality living on the mobile device (because they don't want to be
shut out of the market since they're not strong players in the mobile
space).

> It is sad that the W3C spend resources on areas which already are 
> owned by giant players instead of "simply" making on-line payments 
> secure and convenient.

Keep in mind that nothing has been decided on where the W3C will spend
its time on wrt. Web Payments. That's what the next 3-12 months will be
about in the Web Payments IG.

> I don't think you necessarily need a wallet for that, you rather
> need to nuke dated stuff like NSS since it blocks progress for
> numerous applications (including wallets).

+1, again - "wallet" is a loaded and useless term, but the marketing
folks seem to like it (and I can see an argument to use it to cast a
wide net initially). That said, I don't think the technical groups
should use the term "wallet" because any definition of "wallet" is going
to be so generic and useless as to not help direct the work. For example:

digital wallet - A piece of software or hardware that is capable of
initiating an economic transaction, relaying the result of the
transaction, and storing the result of a transaction. It is also capable
of storing identity information, loyalty cards, and any other
tangentially related information that may be used in economic transactions.

The IG would be better off deconstructing the problem into the minimum
technical requirements to make economic transactions more standardized
on the Web. Namely:

1. Identity / Credentials / KYC
2. Payment Initiation
3. Digital Receipts

... which is basically where this CG ended up after contemplating the
"What is a wallet?" discussion over the past 4+ years.

-- 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 Sunday, 19 October 2014 19:03:23 UTC