W3C releases a public draft : "Common Markup for Web Micropayment Systems"

Leading the Web to its full potential, the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) today released the first public working draft of the "Common
Markup for Web Micropayment Systems" :

The W3C Micropayment activity within the ECommerce Activity [1] has two
Working Groups; Markup Working Group [2] and API Working Group [3].

The Markup Working Group has released a first public W3C Working Draft
"Common Markup for Web Micropayment Systems" [4].
This specification provides an extensible way to embed in a Web page all
the information necessary to initialize a micropayment (amounts and
currencies, payment systems, etc.). This embedding allows different
electronic wallets to coexist in a inter operable manner.
The W3C Membership and other interested parties are invited to review
this public specification and report implementation experience.
This Working Draft should follow the W3C process to W3C Recommendation. 

The Markup Working Group should release another public draft "RFD Markup
for Web Micropayment Systems" (still under review within WG) [5]. 
This document is an extension to the "Common Markup for Web Micropayment
Systems" Working Draft. It allows to embed in a Web page micropayment
information using the Resource Description Framework ([RDF]), now a W3C
Recommendation [6]. It is another example of implementation allowing
different electronic wallets to coexist in a interpretable manner. 

The API Working Group is now working on two Working Drafts:
1- A document to specify the functionalities of the Per Fee Link Handler
(PFLH), a module needed to process information from the Merchant server
for initializing a micropayment with a Client wallet. (still under
review within WG). 
2- A document to specify a common Application Programming Interface
(API) for communication from Per Fee Link Handler (PFLH) to wallet
needed to process a micropayment. 

Current members of the W3C Micropayment Working Groups are key industry
players who brought their payment system and Web expertise to the design
of this specification.
Other interested parties are invited to join the Micropayment activity.

[1] http://www.w3.org/ECommerce/Activity.html
[2] http://www.w3.org/ECommerce/Micropayments/Group/MarkupWG.html  (W3C
Members only) 
[3] http://www.w3.org/ECommerce/Micropayments/Group/APIWG.html     (W3C
Members only)  
[4] http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-Micropayment-Markup
[5]
http://www.w3.org/ECommerce/Micropayments/Group/draft/markup-RDF.html 
(W3C Members only) 
[6] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-rdf-syntax/

_______________________________________________________________

Thierry MICHEL                        	tmichel@w3.org
W3C / INRIA 				+33 (0) 4 92 38 79 87
2004, Route des Lucioles                       	
BP 93                                   
06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex,           
France
_______________________________________________________________

Received on Thursday, 18 March 1999 11:08:54 UTC