14 DAY TRIAL // W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), the regulatory body that oversees the creation of Web standards, has announced plans to set up a special group tasked with the responsibility of putting together a standardized API that will simplify the payment and check-out process, but also improve its overall security.
The announcement was made last Wednesday and is an indirect response to the increased number of threats targeting the e-commerce and e-payments field, either through banking trojans or through the exploitation of classic vulnerabilities that lead to data breaches.
This new API will support all classic payment options like credit and debit cards, but will also work with the newer distributed ledger (blockchain) technologies employed by Bitcoin and all its deviations.
The API is not a be-all, end-all solution, but will serve as a base that provides directions and instructions on how developers can register payment instructions, how the browser should treat it, and how information should be delivered to the payments processors.
The Web Payments API will improve the overall security of online transactions
Besides making the check-out process much simpler from a developer's perspective, the new API will also erase the line between desktop and mobile payments, and provide a faster and easier way for adopting new payment instruments, or improvements related to existing payment processes.
This improves the overall security of the online shopping and online e-payments system, by reducing the number of third-party code, software, and technologies involved in the process.
Companies like Bloomberg, BPCE, Deutsche Telekom, Digital Bazaar, ETA, Federal Reserve Bank, Ingenico Labs, MAG, NACS, Qihoo360, Rabobank, Ripple, and WorldPay have pledged their support.
The group estimates that the new payments API will reach browsers by the end of 2017. For more details, you can consult the Web Payments Working Group Charter, and the group's wiki FAQ page.
