The mission of the Web Payments Working Group, part of the Web Payments Activity, is to make payments easier and more secure on the Web. See the charter for more information.

Goals

The Web Payments WG is committed to deliver technical specifications that cover three main areas:

1. a set of messages that can be used to accomplish a payment,
2. message flows for the initiation and, where scheme-permitting, confirmation or completion of a payment, and
3. an Application Programming Interface (API) to allow Web applications to participate in these flows.

Improved interoperability between payer and payee systems will offer a number of benefits:

• A better checkout experience for users, particularly on mobile devices. The standards should facilitate automation, one approach to improving the user experience.
• Streamlined payment flow, which is expected to reduce the percentage of transactions abandoned prior to completion ("shopping cart abandonment").
• Easier adoption of payment instrument improvements (e.g., related to security) or new payment instruments.
• Added value through machine-readable digital payment requests and payment responses.

Current Status

• On 21 April the Working Group published three First Public Working Drafts:
  • Payment Request API: This specification describes a web API to allow merchants (i.e., web sites selling physical or digital goods) to easily accept payments from different payment methods with minimal integration. User agents (e.g. browsers) will facilitate the payment flow between merchant and user.
  • Payment Method Identifiers: This document defines payment method identifier strings so that components in the payment ecosystem can determine which parties support which payment methods.
  • Basic Card Payment: This specification describes the data formats used by the Payment Request API to support payment by payment cards such as credit or debit cards.
• The Working Group also published a Payment Request API FAQ.
• On 21 April, the group resolved to take on Basic CT-DD Payment as a deliverable.
• As of 28 April, the group's top priorities are "paymentRequest API" and "payment app registration".
• On 5 May 2016, the group resolved to adopt HTTP API and Core Messages specifications as deliverables of the WPWG.
• The Working Group is documenting payment flows to evaluate the API and begin the work of creating documentation to help developers understand how to use the API. The group has also begun to "translate" these flows into payment method specifications (e.g., for card payments and SEPA credit transfers); more should follow soon.

How the Working Group Works

Working Group participants hold regular meetings, for which proceedings are public. The Working Group uses Github to manage the majority of the group's activity, notably for specifications, issues, and actions. However, a small number of actions are at times recorded in the W3C action tracking tool. Read more about how the Working Group works.

Work Developed in Community Groups

• Web Incubator Community Group:
  • Payment App Registration