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W3C announces new Web standard for online payments
- skilled 3y agoThe W3 press release and a relevant Chrome link, https://www.w3.org/2023/06/pressrelease-spc-cr.html.en https://www.w3.org/2023/06/pressrelease-spc-cr.html.en https://developer.chrome.com/articles/secure-payment-confirmation/ https://developer.chrome.com/articles/secure-payment-confirm...
- colesantiago 3y ago[flagged]
- graypegg 3y agoWhat’s so comical about this is that common-standard digital-first micropayments is THE use case pitch for cryptocurrencies. They had a… decade-and-a-half head start (?) and didn’t make that work beyond a random array of digital tokens too expensive to purchase anything with, managed via many easily-forged browser extensions.
- nwienert 3y agoML existed since the middle of the last century but has only really found its legs as of late, but I didn’t see a lot of people make fun of it for not being perfect within a decade.
- graypegg 3y agoFair point, but machine learning has also been creating value thru all of that time. There were products that used machine learning in the late 90s for many things. DeepBlue! I think you’re thinking of LLMs which only became possible with the shear amount of conversational data we have today. They obviously share a linage with ML, but it’s a form of training that was impossible several years prior. You can’t say that IBM DeepBlue was an early LLM and measure the timelines like that. If you know of any watershed moment for crypto that needs to happen, I would love to hear it! I just don’t see anything happening on the horizon.
- nwienert 3y agoI’ve been getting and continue to get value from crypto for a multitude of uses. There’s tons of people using it actively, so I just wonder why you choose to ignore that. A lot more than the very marginal value ML did for its first decades of existence. DeepBlue came many decades after the field came into being. And I’m very aware of LLM and the different types of ML. It still stands that it was very marginal for decades. But it would be easy to write some dismissive comment in the 80s that the only thing it’s done is play chess for millions of dollars - exactly like crypto haters do today despite it being a completely nascent field.
- graypegg 3y agoFair! I know there’s lots of wallet activity on any of the big chains right now. I’m a little suspicious of that representing real economic activity (filling the role of a currency, used as units of exchange) and maybe a bit more convinced it’s a casino poker chip ledger. It seems like the simple majority of people trade and transact out of their exchange, to my knowledge. If that simile of ML is like crypto is true, you stand to be quite rich! So best of luck! Best comments have net 0 right, so hopefully you’ll think of me and this thread when you’re a trillionaire eh? ;)
- giantrobot 3y agoML was not marginal for decades. It's been in regular use in a number of fields for decades. The current hype is an artifact of someone putting fun interface in front of an ML system. Hype around generative imagery and LLMs is new, not the technologies themselves. Crypto has been around for nearly a decade and a half and has been really useful for malware and scammers and not much else. It's fundamentally broken as a currency because most coins are designed to be deflationary so they behave like securities. It's fundamentally broken for micro transactions because transactions are ridiculously expensive and slow by design.
- mattdesl 3y agoAI and machine learning has had several decades to mature—and it had multiple “winters” where interest and funding waned. It’s possible in 60 years we might see similar leaps from distributed ledgers, zero knowledge proofs, verifiable computation, fully homomorphic encryption, and other tech being spearheaded by the crypto sector.
- nologic01 3y agoThe comparison of incubation periods, adoption curves etc between crypto to ML cannot take us very far. The reason is that "ML" (as a proxy for algorithmic processing of a variety of data) is not particularly adversarial to pre-existing technologies. While this is not entirely true (there is always a hidden or explicit tension between automation and expert assessments) by-and-large this tension can be managed. The new tech gets bolted on the old. In contrast crypto sought to overthrow all pre-existing monetary and financial system technology with proposals that are naive, half-baked and ignore (or reinvent in unacknowledged manner) vital aspects. The practical implication is that crypto cannot carve a legitimate niche and keep iterating. The main outcome of a lot of wasted energy (in all senses) is to point out that indeed, digitization opens up the way to evolve the financial system. So much we knew, but now it has been drilled into the heads of large swaths of politicos, regulators, bankers etc that are completely tech illiterate.
- bearjaws 3y agoWell when 90% of your budget goes to marketing and covering up your ponzi scheme, doesn't leave a whole lot to engineering.
- dylan604 3y agowhich kind of proves the point that crypto wasn't about the everyday person making daily transactions. it was a pipe dream of a way to handle large amounts of money while minimizing the fees/taxes associated with fiat monies. if crypto was about the everyday person, it would have been made useful
- DaiPlusPlus 3y ago> What’s so comical about this is that common-standard digital-first micropayments is THE use case pitch for cryptocurrencies I had been following BTC since ~2009 (when a CS PhD friend of mine at uni introduced me to it, as his research project was on distributed ledgers) - but from the very start it was made clear to me that projects like Bitcoin would never be suitable for microtransactions due to the reasons that became clear to everyone since then: at the values of microtransactions (i.e. under $3 USD) the cost of committing that transaction within reasonable time-frame for a microtransaction (say, less than a minute for a mobile-game IAP purchase) is simply prohibitive and makes the legacy incumbent card networks (Visa, Mastercard, etc) seem like nimble, customer-pleasing startups.
- spraveenitpro 3y ago[dead]
- graypegg 3y agoWell said. It’s a fine line right? I’m not cheering on Visa and Mastercard. But they really do have the most customer pleasing product. If I’m betting with my own money and projects on the future of something, hard to drift towards the “universal crypto adoption”.
- toomim 3y agoYou can use payment channels for microtransactions.
- olalonde 3y agoWhat's comical is when people assume that upending established financial systems, such as centuries-old fiat currencies and banks, should be a walk in the park. Such transformation doesn't merely involve introducing a disruptive technology, but necessitates overcoming many legal and societal challenges. If you'd have told anyone in 2009 that an open source decentralized currency would eventually become a trillion dollar market, or that it would be recognized as legal tender in some countries, no one would have believed you. Yet here we are with people complaining about how it hasn't yet obsoleted the US dollar.
- graypegg 3y agoTotally fair, it’s obviously a bit of a “no true scotsman” argument for me to move the goals posts to “crypto is only a success if it replaces X”. However if im making bets for my own projects, with my own money, I’m not seeing the incentives for the sort of massive change to actually happen. Love it or hate it, you can’t just burn down the world and start over, so something has to be aligned with the gate keepers to make this work. I don’t think it is. Without adoption it’s ceases to be valuable to those outside the magic circle, which means it’s not worth adopting.
- dbmikus 3y agoCrypto gets actual real (non-trading/non-gambling) usage in parts of LatAm. This blog post[1] from Vitalik explains a little: > Unlike wealthy countries like the United States, where financial transactions are easy to make and 8% inflation is considered extreme, in Argentina and many other countries around the world, links to global financial systems are more limited and extreme inflation is a reality every day. Cryptocurrency often steps in as a lifeline Some of the users are on battle tested decentralized solutions like Ethereum and its rollups. Others transact through centralized exchanges because fees are cheaper. And others use more centralized blockchain networks such as Tron to avoid high fees. On one hand, using central exchanges doesn't match up to the decentralized promise of the blockchain. On the other hand, it's cool to see people using crypto without caring that it's crypto. They just want to have access to more stable currencies for payments and transactions! I've seen this myself, from talking to LatAm businesses and from a friend in Argentina. [1]: https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/12/05/excited.html https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/12/05/excited.html
- pppppkkkkkkkk 3y ago[flagged]
- naillo 3y agoSeems like something stripe should be pretty worried over
- jaywalk 3y agoNope, not at all.
- scrollaway 3y agoUnlike many companies out there such as Intuit, stripe doesn’t rely on the world continuing to suck in order to exist.
- graypegg 3y ago> Stripe conducted a pilot with an early implementation of SPC and, in March 2020 reported that, compared to one-time passcodes (OTP), SPC authentication led to an 8% increase in conversions at the same time checkout was 3 times faster. They seem pretty excited about it.
- edwinwee 3y agoYep, Stripe partnered with W3C on this. Built into Stripe Checkout (and now Link).
- data-ottawa 3y agoStripe is where the money goes to and handles getting it to your bank, this is better and faster authentication of purchase. It should reduce fraud and apparently improve conversion rates, so that’s a big win for Stripe.
- ceejayoz 3y agoThis doesn't threaten Stripe at all. They already process Apple Pay payments.
- kevinsundar 3y agohttps://www.w3.org/blog/wpwg/2021/03/26/secure-payment-confirmation-stripe-experiment-and-next-steps/ https://www.w3.org/blog/wpwg/2021/03/26/secure-payment-confi... This describes Stripe's early involvement in the spec.
- dlisboa 3y agoEdit: looks like I made a fool of myself. I didn’t know about Apples other implementation of a similar feature. It seems nice but I think Apple will never implement this for Safari, even if standardized. It’d bypass their AppStore and make the web even more “app-like”, which they already aren’t crazy about.
- cormacrelf 3y agoI think you might be forgetting that Apple Pay exists and has worked on the web for years. This looks like a standardised version of Apple Pay.
- refulgentis 3y agoIncorrect. The standardized version of Apple Pay is the Payments Request API, which has been in place for years.
- DrBenCarson 3y agoAnd has been supported by Apple for 5 years.
- coffeedoughnuts 3y agoApplePay in-the-web has existed since the inception of the feature. I'm not sure how the App Store is relevant here?
- refulgentis 3y agoThis is a new web standard, it’s not Apple Pay.
- scarface_74 3y agoNo one is disputing that this is a new standard. The dispute is that Apple wouldn’t support it because it would take away from some hypothetical App Store revenue. Apple already supports the existing standard showing the argument doesn’t hold.
- SoftTalker 3y agoSince I'm getting 500 errors, https://www.w3.org/TR/secure-payment-confirmation/ https://www.w3.org/TR/secure-payment-confirmation/
- F2hP18Foam 3y agoOn the one hand seems convenient, but on the other, I'm not a fan of tech that lowers the friction between my money and my pocket.
- wahnfrieden 3y agoLet’s go back to mailing personal checks to shareware companies
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- thecosas 3y agoDon't forget to mail them the floppies to load up and send back :-)
- tantalor 3y agoWhat are you going to use the money for, if not spend it on something? Are you going to make a pile of gold and sit on it like a dragon?
- bern4444 3y agoSome people like to save and invest instead of spending every single cent they have. We'd be a much more stable society if the majority of the population wasn't one paycheck away from being financially ruined. 37% of Americans don't have enough savings to cover a $400 emergency[0]. That percentage goes up as the amount goes up and a $400 emergency is easy to hit - medical bill, moving expense, car repair, etc. It becomes 68% at $1,000[1]. [0]https://fortune.com/2023/05/23/inflation-economy-consumer-finances-americans-cant-cover-emergency-expense-federal-reserve/ https://fortune.com/2023/05/23/inflation-economy-consumer-fi... [1]https://fortune.com/recommends/banking/57-percent-of-americans-cant-afford-a-1000-emergency-expense/ https://fortune.com/recommends/banking/57-percent-of-america...
- uoaei 3y ago
- gigatexal 3y agolol that url applemust is a bit much. Really cool that there might be some standards incoming though
- Brendinooo 3y agoHow is it different than the Payment Request API?
- koprulusector 3y agoThis is explicitly to authenticate payment, cryptographically sign/verify user consent. It’s about authentication and less about the paying.
- EGreg 3y agoWhew. I saw the word crypto… and figured that the W3C is running a ponzi scam. No one is above ridicule the moment I see crypto involved! It has no good use cases and that’s final
- dbbk 3y agoSounds like it's Payment Request API + the biometric verification, so no more "open your bank app to approve this transaction"
- wdb 3y agoThat's the whole part I liked about Payment Request API
- nightpool 3y agoAdds integration with WebAuthn to skip 3DSecure/SCA popups in cases where the user has a biometric authenticator that's been registered with the bank
- danShumway 3y agoInteresting that this is built on top of FIDO/webauthn. I'm still somewhat worried about webauthn but recent news around it has (imo) been moving in a more positive direction and I'm less worried about it than I used to be. So I would really love to be cautiously optimistic about this. Assuming webauthn turns out well, this seems to be a pretty natural and pretty useful extension.
- bsimpson 3y agoThere's still a W3C?! I'm kidding on the square, but I thought they'd been effectively displaced by WHATWG (and TC39).
- amielucha 3y agoW3C should standardize cookie policy banners, and popups. This monstrosity of a feature should have always been a browser feature, not a burden for web developers.
- laszlokorte 3y agoI never understood why websites are required to inform about cookies if it's acutally the browsers who store the cookies on the device and send them back to the server. How about a domain.tld/.well-known/cookies.txt file that contains a description about each cookie-key and then let the browser provide the UI for displaying that information and being configurable on which individual cookies to store for how long? (and for example discard all cookies that are not described in the cookies.txt file)
- Dylan16807 3y agoA voluntary feature for the convenience of users in choosing whether to have specific cookies? That won't work. The cookie banners are annoying and tricky on purpose.
- janosd 3y agoBecause it's not just about cookies. There are two laws at play, the GDPR and the ePrivacy directive. It's a mix of cookies, local storage, allowing the browser to load third party tracking scripts after information/consent, and data processing taking place on the server side. Simply solving cookies won't make the banners go away.
- Beldin 3y agoWebsites are legally required (both e-privacy directive and GDPR) to inform users (at least those from the EU) about what user information they store/track. This pertains to cookies as well as any other methods of doing so. Since they're the ones doing that, it makes sense that they're the ones with the legal obligation. It just so happens that just about every website decided to make this incredibly obnoxious, instead of respecting their visitors. As a legal professor said (paraphrased): it was amazing to see an entire industry come together to undermine legislation.
- w_for_wumbo 3y agoLet's hope you can't just pass through "NoNe" as the algorithm and break the entire thing like some JWTs
- mcv 3y agoIt's not clear to me from the article how this is supposed to work. My favourite payment system is still the Dutch iDeal: marchant creates a payment request, redirects the user to their own bank, the user uses thhe bank's authorization system to authorize the payment, informs the merchant that payment is successful, and then redirects the user back to the merchant who now knows the transaction is successful, without having to know anything about how the user paid.
- wdb 3y agoHow is this going to integrate with my banking app, though? I quite like the Apple Pay or iDeal approaches. I don't really want my browser to confirm payments to be honest.