Joint Electronic Payment Initiative

Version 1.0; June 1, 1996

Introduction

W3C has undertaken a joint project with CommerceNet to explore the process that takes place, typically, after shopping and before actual payment begins. At this time, the exact payment instrument (credit card, debit card, electronic check, electronic cash, etc.) is determined, the payment amount, and the payment protocol. The goal of the JEPI project is to provide an architecturally viable mechanism for doing this negotiation over the Web. The project is intended to be short-term, focused on a complete end-to-end purchase demonstration in September, 1996.

Like other activities in the W3C Technology and Society area, JEPI is intended to respond to an actual need expressed by the community (this need was identified at a meeting of the XIWT in November, 1995). The goal is to provide the missing piece of technology (in this case, PEP and UPP protocols), to help the industry jointly develop the solution, and to encourage its ultimate deployment.

Requirements

  1. A complete demonstration scenario, from shopping through actual purchase of merchandise.
  2. A protocol that is architecturally well-founded and can handle not only the precise demonstration scenario but a variety of other variants that are expected to be explored in the future.
  3. Non-trivial negotiation, including perhaps such items as incentives for use of particular payment instruments or purchase prices split across multiple instruments.
  4. SET (the MasterCard/VISA credit card protocol) must be one of the supported payment protocols.

Current Situation

The JEPI project is the primary activity in the W3C electronic payment area. Rather than pursue the development of specific payment protocols, W3C is working to allow the smooth interoperation of existing and future protocols. The JEPI project consists of a number of teams, coordinated by a steering committee. The steering committee consists of Jim Miller (W3C), Tom Wills (CommerceNet), Ken Rodrigues (OSF/The Open Group), and Dan Scheutzer (FSTC). The implementation team, which consists of companies that have devoted resources to actually demonstrate JEPI in September consists of IBM (Web server), Open Market (Web server), Microsoft (Web browser), CyberCash (Payment system), and GCTech (Payment system). All participants in JEPI are invited to participate in the demonstration in September in any appropriate role, provided that interoperability has been successfully demonstrated to the steering committee in advance.

Products

The JEPI project is centered around three protocols:

  1. SET (Secure Electronic Transactions), a protocol adopted by MasterCard and VISA for credit card transactions over open networks.
  2. PEP (Protocol Extension Protocol), proposed as part of HTTP 1.2, a protocol for extending HTTP to allow additional protocols to ride along with the primary client/server interaction on the Web. PEP provides a basic framework for negotiation between clients and servers.
  3. UPP (Universal Payment Preamble), a protocol proposed to the IETF by Donald Eastlake, for specifying such things as purchase price based on currency or payment vehicle.

W3C will produce the PEP specification. W3C will also produce an implementation of PEP through a proxy server based on W3C's Jigsaw server. The implementation work will include the specification of a Jigsaw-specific (Java language) API for connecting a PEP module into the server, as well as two PEP plug-in modules (PICS and UPP). It makes a good deal of sense for W3C to consider implementing PEP for the Amaya browser, but this has not yet been confirmed with the Amaya team.

Next Step

W3C is hosting a meeting of the JEPI implementation and design teams, to produce an API specification for connecting payment systems to a PEP/UPP module on both the client and server side. In addition, W3C is working with CommerceNet to locate merchants willing to participate in the September demonstration.

Public Commitments

W3C has committed to publishing the PEP specification that emerges from JEPI. We have also committed to producing the PEP proxy server implementation, and to hosting a demonstration (with CommerceNet) in September, 1996.