Yay and Nay of Web Payment Standardization
With HTML5 and the boom of web apps, there are increasing chances for us to using payment through these online applications. How to technically achieve transaction online differs from platform to platform today. The greatest challenge in handling online transaction would be security since payment information including credit card numbers is a very sensitive and personal. There are quite few services that will do the handling for you such as Paypal, Google Checkout or Amazon Payments, but there is no unified way for both developers or customers to handle web payments.
The new Firefox OS comes with an attempted solution by Mozilla. This Javascript API navigator.mozPay() will be aiming to standardize the way online payments are handled in various online apps and websites. One notable (upcoming) feature of mozPay is that they intend to not restrict the payment option to just bank transfers and credit cards. In the final product, supposedly the user will be able to choose any option they like.
The security would always be an issue for online payments. No security is perfect; even the copy-prevention security for Blu-ray players is predicted to be cracked in 10 or more years. The security needs to keep evolving in order to escape the crackers. For the online payment system, one of the risk for unifying the interface is that if the security is broken, every users may get into trouble. Right now, even if one payment method may have been compromised and were able to be “injected” unintended purchases, other methods most likely will stay secure. If the online payment is standardized to mozPay, such buffer will not exist.
However, standardizing payment method will also be convenient for every users, because each user do not have to register with many different services in order to make payments in different websites. The different options a web services may have for payment will not be the factor to encourage or discourage users anymore. This would lessen the barrier between startup and shareholders since making many different payment options available will increase maintenance cost for the service providers. Not having to enter and store your credit card numbers in many different locations on the web will also be a good consequence of standardizing payment methods.
I am overall for standardizing online payment options because while I would trust some services to hold my credit card information, there are also some services that I don't but I still want to make purchases from. If the unified method is secure enough that we can trust it, it should be a benefit for both the customers and sellers. Of course, a question will arise for who will be responsible if any leak or hack happens – I have a feeling there is going to be a statement in the terms of service once it is released that Mozilla would not be held responsible, unless the credit card information is stored in association with some user account in cloud or somewhere on their server. Hopefully if the credit card information is only stored locally analogous to browser cookies, it will also be encrypted and not easily visible.
Sources:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Mozilla-Wants-to-Standardize-and-Fix-Web-Payments-Starting-with-navigator-mozPay-343075.shtml https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/04/introducing-navigator-mozpay-for-web-payments/ http://sixrevisions.com/tools/online-payment-systems/