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

> Keep in mind that just about everyone that read that sentence thought it said
something different.

This is true, but that's exactly why it would make sense to agree on a
basic definition (at least in the context of the Web), just like what is
done with the keys of a JSON-LD document when it's mapped to a context. I
don't really know how to define a digital wallet beyond a *resource* that
stores credentials (i.e. depository) and is able to participate in
transactions, which I agree is

> so generic and useless as to not help direct the work

However, I don't think that dropping the term "wallet" would save us from
using any other generic terms, since we would still need to define what it
means in the context of Web Payments. Instead, I think we could replace the
term/question "What is a Digital Wallet?" for "What is a Web Wallet?" to
take the context into account and find a less generic definition (even if
the term "digital wallet" is used in the definition of a "web wallet"), and
then it would be easier to depict the difference between a Google Wallet, a
Bitcoin Wallet and a Web Wallet, just like we implicitly know the
difference between an Identity Document, a Microsoft Word Document and a
JSON Document (even if the term "document" is very generic as well).

> 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.

+1. By no means we should ignore the learnings from 4+ years of this
discussion nor go over it again nor prolong it much more, but just to
narrow the scope of the definition to the context of the Web. So, assuming
we agree on a basic, non-generic term whose definition helps direct the
work (e.g. a web wallet is a URL that represents an [a set of]
identity/payment credential[s]), the focus should definitely be on
credentials (resources) and payment initiation (interactions) as the
minimum technical requirements to standardize (I see digital receipts as
another type of credentials that say "believe me, I paid" instead of
"believe me, I can pay").

On Sun, Oct 19, 2014 at 5:48 PM, Joseph Potvin <jpotvin@opman.ca> wrote:

> FWIW, I use the generic term "depository" in my work.
> http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/depository.asp
>
> This word already has applications in diverse fields (eg a book
> depository), but it's many uses are accepted as context specific. So it's
> acceptable to refer to a depository for digital funds, for example. The
> point being, that its precisely "a place to put stuff" and the surrounding
> context indicates precisely what sort of stuff.  Such flexibilty is useful,
> methinks.
>
> Joseph
>
> On Sun, Oct 19, 2014 at 3:02 PM, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 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/
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Joseph Potvin
> Operations Manager | Gestionnaire des opérations
> The Opman Company | La compagnie Opman
> jpotvin@opman.ca
> Mobile: 819-593-5983
>