Rabobank and W3C are working on an open standard for online payments

The World Wide Web Consortium is working on open standards for online payments. The W3C Payments Interest Group first focuses on a universal wallet system and then has to realize cooperation between existing payment methods. Rabobank supports the project.

In addition to Rabobank, Bloomberg, Gemalto and the Russian search engine Yandex have also joined the Web Payments Interest Group. The W3C calls on all those involved in online payment transactions, in the hope that the project will eventually be broadly supported.

It is not yet clear exactly how W3C intends to achieve its goals. In any case, the organization wants to create open standards that limit the risk of online fraud and promote ease of use. “We see innovation in mobile payment systems,” says the W3C, for example, “but the lack of standards makes it difficult to switch to new payment methods such as cryptocurrencies or payment providers.”

The group will initially focus on digital wallets. The so-called wallets should offer more privacy and security, because sensitive data is only shared with the payment provider and not with merchants. That way of working would also be suitable for simplifying the payment process of mobile devices. The Payments Interest Group emphasizes not to come up with wallets itself, but to develop a framework that should ensure that web applications work in a standardized way with existing and future payment methods.