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RFC-8905: The 'payto' URI Scheme for Payments (2020)
- rapnie 5y agoWith the launch of Stripe Payment Links [0] it is worth pointing out this IETF informational draft that may be a better open-standards approach for the future of the open web (which Stripe of course would gladly adopt ;) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27280096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27280096
- geofft 5y agoThis is a custom, non-HTTP URL scheme which requires registering handlers and needing to teach your client about handlers. Stripe's payment links are regular web pages on the regular web. So purely from an open web perspective, Stripe's existing system seems better.
- akie 5y agoI think it's better to build such systems on open standards, and to not rely on private companies to define and control the outcome. But since Stripe is way ahead here they might end up the de-facto standard anyway.
- ludamad 5y agoThe whole QUIC thing showed that new protocols must play nice with the many layers of packet analysis. I suspect that a real-world informed approach will differ quite a lot from an ideal design - and a company "way ahead" has more reason than inertia to be copied
- elric 5y agoAn URI scheme does not necessarily imply a new transport layer network protocol. I can't see any immediate reason why a new protocol would be required here.
- Nursie 5y agoInteresting. Seems like it could interact with (for instance) confirmation-of-payee systems in the UK, through use of the "name" field. I can see it growing all sorts of new fields though, and being used maliciously. I guess security considerations are largely out of scope for the rfc though.
- richardwhiuk 5y agoNot sure entirely out of scope - there is a security considerations section - https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8905#section-8 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8905#section-8
- Nursie 5y agoIt's certainly there, but for anything approaching the sphere of payment systems, seems rather short. I wonder how such a thing might play with things like OpenBanking payment services...
- trissylegs 5y agoI wonder how well I'd work with email based payids in Australia. Eg payto://payid/foo@example.com?bar=baz
- richardwhiuk 5y agoThat's a potentially valid URI according to the scheme - pathabempty may contain @ signs according to RFC 3986
- einpoklum 5y agoWouldn't this float or sink solely based on adoption by large Internet-focused commercial corporations (e.g. Amazon, AliExpress)? Or payment processors/mediators like Paypal?
- viraptor 5y agoThis doesn't look like something the global marketplaces would be interested in. Maybe with some extensions on top? PayPal and invoice generators are more likely. Also content donation links like Coil or BAT. Things that don't need a synchronous confirmation for the result in order to ship you stuff.
- marcosdumay 5y agoHum, somebody will have to support this for it to be successful, but who exactly is not clear to me. We have cryptocoins and national standards that any software could support, for example.
- chrismorgan 5y agoPrevious discussion seven months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24885193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24885193 It is important to note also that this is an Independent Submission, Informational in nature only. Despite being published through IETF and having an RFC number, it’s probably fair to consider it as little more than a blog post, as regards authority.
- callesgg 5y agoI like the idea of putting a QR code on invoices with the payment url. My current bank has OCR reading of invoices built in to their app but that feels like a bit of a hack. Which In turn makes my think about if the Swedish postgiro/bankgiro payment system would work with this type of link.
- elric 5y agoWhy not a human-readable URL instead? Or both, I guess.
- callesgg 5y agoThe point of the QR code would be to be able to scan it with a cell phone. The url on a paper would not help with that. But I guess if you have a digital invoice the link would become clickable which is nice.
- johbjo 5y agoThe OCR codes/checksums are readable both by machine and human, which was the point. Not a hack. But the bit-length of the QR-code is probably bigger than what humans would accept so putting the information into alphanumerics might not be practical.
- callesgg 5y agoThe bank account nr are not.
- jgalt212 5y agoClick to Steal /s
- _448 5y agoNot the same but, if I remember correctly, Ripple was trying to do something similar i.e. use URIs for money transfer.
- elric 5y agoThe IBAN scheme is probably a bit too simplistic, but I'd say it's a good start. You can't figure out how to pay someone with just an account number. If my browser were to implement this scheme, it wouldn't know what to do. Redirect me to my bank so I can launch a SEPA instant payment? How does it know where my bank is? What if I have multiple banks? What if I want to pay by card?
- hnlmorg 5y agomailto has the same problems; which is probably why so many sites have a contact form instead of a mailto link.
- derefr 5y agoI don't see what's hard about mailto:. Your browser sees a mailto: link, and passes it off to OS default-open-action logic. Some program on your OS has registered itself as wanting the mailto: scheme-association, so it gets opened. That program receives the mailto: URI as its ARGV[1], and can then parse it. In theory, different mail programs might do different things with a mailto: URI, or expect different things to be in a mailto: URI — but by registering an association with the mailto: scheme, they're claiming to do something useful with a mailto: URI if passed one.
- hnlmorg 5y agoIt's not hard, it's just a lot of different stakeholders that need to be coordinated for it to work. And it took a long time for said products to get organised, meanwhile companies still needed convenient ways of allowing customers to contact them....hence the contact forms. It will be the same problem here. It's safer not to use a payto scheme if it is the difference between a future customer being unable to buy your services because they haven't yet got the latest associations installed.
- oauea 5y agoEven worse: The stakeholders in the companies that decide to have contact forms are generally not very technical. They probably never successfully installed a mail client in their life, so it's not very surprising they don't opt into using mailto links.
- dhaavi 5y agoIn Europe, the EPC QR Code is taking off. Most bank apps support them, and they are making their way onto payment requests, both in paper and digitally. You then open your banking app and scan it manually. It's not exactly a link. Details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPC_QR_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPC_QR_code Would be nice for something more generic to take off, though.
- dylan604 5y agoWhy are people so in love with the QR payment systems vs what Apple Pay has done? I'm not saying to be excited about being beholden to Apple, but their payment system just seems so much more efficient than the whole QR system. What am I missing?
- c0nsumer 5y agoIt's a whole lot easier to slap QR codes on things than getting NFC tags and applying them.
- tjohns 5y agoOn the other hand, QR code payment systems only work while the user has a good network connection. NFC payment terminals can work while the user's device is offline, like rural areas with poor cellular coverage. Not to mention tap-and-pay cards that don't even need a battery. (Note: The few cases in the US I've seen QR code based payments, it's been for things like Alipay at a traditional point of sale terminal - which would also have a traditional card terminal with NFC reader. I could see QR codes being useful in other contexts, like paying a paper bill that came in the mail.)
- cobrabyte 5y agoWith so many different cryptocurrencies available, why choose the one (Bitcoin) that's least useful as a form of payment? It takes a very long time to get confirmations, and the fees are too high to be useful for small transactions. The proposal should be inclusive of all cryptocurrencies.
- woah 5y agoLooks like the proposal supports a lot of different payment types
- mro_name 5y agoot: Thanks Christian for your firm stance explaining crypto to the London judges.