Live data from Hacker News

Payment Request API

w3.org

81–90 of 128 posts

Re: Payment Request API

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To enable micropayments for content such as news.

True micropayments integrated in browser would be amazing. Imagine instead of ads or subscriptions, you could pay a few pennies for an article. It would revolutionize online content, in a good way. Nobody would be willing to pay for clickbait type stuff, but I think people would be willing to pay for quality content and journalism.

I want to pay a fixed amount per month, and distribute that money over the websites I visited, weighted by the time I spent there.

Re: Payment Request API

#82

So there's now a protocol for the browser to transparently share payment data with websites but we still can't get something to let the browser transparently log us in to websites?

Isn't kerberos supposed to do that?

Supposed to, perhaps. But it's not going to happen. Kerberos is ridiculously complex (it's not named after Hades' three-headed dog for nothing) and hard to deploy. When used it is usually only done for company's own/internal apps. I don't think I've ever seen anything with Kerberos on the public internet.

The description on Wikipedia for Cerberus/Kerberos is pretty apt when applied to the protocol too:

> Cerberus was the offspring of the monsters Echidna and Typhon, and usually is described as having three heads, a serpent for a tail, and snakes protruding from parts of his body.

Re: Payment Request API

#83
post #4

Why do we need to put a payment api into a browser?

To enable micropayments for content such as news.

This would be perfect for me, and I suspect there are a lot of people in my situation: I would far prefer to pay for news than have intrusive and possibly dangerous advertising, and I do subscribe to a couple of news sites. I'm not going to subscribe to every paywalled news site that I might want to read, but I would be happy to pay for an occasional article.

If micropayments were ever to really take off, it would shift the balance of power on the internet in an interesting way.

Re: Payment Request API

#84
post #5

For anyone else like me who was overwhelmed by all the information and just looking for summaries: "In one sentence, how does it work? Payment Request API enables a user to complete a transaction more easily by reusing information stored in the browser or third party payment apps." https://github.com/w3c/payment-request-info/wiki/FAQ

This also opens up the door to more secure payments. The "basic card" handler is one where the browser might just store your raw card number. But you can imagine that your bank might implement a payment handler that requires you to enter a 2fa code before using your card. When it comes down to it, a credit card number is kind of serving double as a username and password for online payments right now. This new API has…

That would be welcome. Half of the payment process on websites don't survive an adblocker and blocking third party cookies.

Re: Payment Request API

#85

So there's now a protocol for the browser to transparently share payment data with websites but we still can't get something to let the browser transparently log us in to websites?

That's what Mozilla Persona (not the theming system) was meant to be, but apparently people didn't care enough for it for websites to implement it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Persona

Re: Payment Request API

#86
post #44

Not sure if this is still the case, but Marcos from Mozilla did a talk on this at CampJS earlier this year. Apparently Chrome will send data about the items purchased to Google, even if you’re using a payment provider completely unrelated to Google. Unlike Chrome, Firefox will apparently not send data about what you purchase back to Mozilla. Edit: https://twitter.com/chrismorrisorg/status/896352427426799618

> Unlike Chrome, Firefox will apparently not send data about what you purchase back to Mozilla. It sounds like something has been lost in translation. If not, Marcos is conflating two very different things. If you use Payment Request in Chrome with Google Wallet or Android Pay then yes, Google is going to have a description of what you bought and where you bought it. But you used their payment service. This is no dif…

> If you use Payment Request in Chrome with Google Wallet or Android Pay then yes, Google is going to have a description of what you bought and where you bought it. But you used their payment service. This is no different to what PayPal or a dozen other payment services are doing.

Importantly, it _is_ different than what Apple Pay does.

Re: Payment Request API

#87
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True micropayments integrated in browser would be amazing. Imagine instead of ads or subscriptions, you could pay a few pennies for an article. It would revolutionize online content, in a good way. Nobody would be willing to pay for clickbait type stuff, but I think people would be willing to pay for quality content and journalism.

I want to pay a fixed amount per month, and distribute that money over the websites I visited, weighted by the time I spent there.

A micropayment system tied in to browsing history might make this possible. Otherwise it would require essentially a syndicated subscription system, which is server side, but would need enough content producers on board to make feasible, and they probably wouldn't be able to agree.

Re: Payment Request API

#88
post #85

So there's now a protocol for the browser to transparently share payment data with websites but we still can't get something to let the browser transparently log us in to websites?

That's what Mozilla Persona (not the theming system) was meant to be, but apparently people didn't care enough for it for websites to implement it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Persona

Mozilla Persona suffered from the problem that its developers abandoned it shortly after releasing it, rather than making any attempt to get it into browsers. The pop-up dialog wasn't how it was supposed to work, that was a fallback (and apparently a slightly confusing one) - there was supposed to be a little login widget in your address bar that you'd interact with, and it'd be fully integrated into your browser's UI.

Re: Payment Request API

#90
So currently, users are often redirected to the 3rd party payment service or interact with an embedded form offered by the 3rd party service and the user either has to register/login. Does this mean, in the case of PayPal, users will have to install the PayPal Payment API App on their browsers?
Post reply on HN