WC3′s Web Payments Redesign Could Bypass Bitcoin

Like innovators in the bitcoin space, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is seeking to solve e-commerce’s persistent problems of high friction and fraud rates through its new Web Payments Interest Group, announced on 15th October.
Proponents of digital currency have been enthusiastic about the launch, expressing optimism that the non-profit dedicated to establishing consensus for open web standards – founded by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee – would embrace an innovation that itself has been heralded as the Internet of money.
Expectations aside, project lead Stphane Boyera told CoinDesk that while W3C is open to considering how bitcoin and block-chain technology could play a role in these discussions, the group doesn’t immediately see bitcoin as something that could enable its objectives short term.
Boyera asserted that the W3C is concerned first and foremost with making payments easier for merchants and consumers today, and that means bringing together existing payments stakeholders from the banking, finance, telecommunications and web industries.
Drawing on conclusions reached at the group’s preliminary meeting this March, he said:
“One of the first things we identified was not trying to change the way payments are done today, but just focusing on the connection between existing payment systems and web applications.”
Boyera said that members of the digital currency industry, including Ripple Labs, had been present, but that the event mainly served as a way to gather the various parties involved in online payments. All agreed there had previously been no good forum they could use to communicate about what is a prevalent issue.

This post was published at Coin Desk on October 31, 2014.