The Web Payments Browser API
This is a proposal by the Web Payments Community Group for a new browser API to enable a better payment experience on the Web. The API enables web developers to register payment instruments (credit card, PayPal, Bitcoin, etc.), initiate requests for payment, and acknowledge requests for payment.
Editor’s draft: http://wicg.github.io/web-payments-browser-api/
Github: https://github.com/web-payments/web-payments-browser-api/
Note: This is a “competing” proposal to the one put together by Zach Koch.
Problem
Sending and receiving money on the Web is currently a manual process that requires the sharing of secrets, such as credit card numbers. Not only is the process not uniform across the same payment methods on different websites, it is also a major target for phishing and other financial attacks.
Vision
In general, this proposal attempts to enable a set of standard payment flows on the Web while also automating a large part of the payment flow. Where possible, more secure mechanisms for making payments are enabled so that the end result is a seamless and far more secure payment experience on the Web.
The full vision of the Web Payments Work at W3C can be found here:
http://www.w3.org/Payments/IG/Vision
Roadmap
Phase I of the Web Payments Roadmap focuses on enabling basic payment flows via the browser. Details of this roadmap can be found here:
http://www.w3.org/Payments/IG/Roadmap/#web-payments-phase-1
Use Cases
There are 17 use cases that we are attempting to partially (or fully) address in Phase I with this browser API:
http://www.w3.org/Payments/IG/Roadmap/#use-cases
The full list of Web Payments use cases can be found here: