W3C to Standardise ECommerce Platforms across the World

Online retail is a global phenomenon. Leading ecommerce platforms like Amazon, eBay, Rakuten etc. have a strong global presence. Apart from these global ecommerce companies there are thousands of ecommerce platforms catering to different geographies, not to mention small online businesses including individual owned online shop fronts that augment brick and mortar businesses. No matter how big or small they are as long as they are online they can cater to the whole world irrespective of any geographical boundaries.

While reaching out to global audience is easy for online retailers, converting their reach to sales is a challenge. A sale is not complete unless the user makes a successful transaction and cross border transactions can be a mess at times. Each country has its own preferred payment method that people use extensively and the same may not work for other countries. In order to ensure flawless transactions over these ecommerce sites, a global standard has to be implemented. Existence of such standards will drive conversion rates on these ecommerce portals through the roof.

According to reports, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), responsible for standardising the internet – html codes, online databases etc. now plans to standardize ecommerce platforms. W3C will be setting up a Web Payments Working Group with professionals from the payments industry heading it. The report mentions Nick Telford-Reed, the head of technology at WorldPay to co-chair the working group along with Adrian Hope-Bailie from Ripple Labs.

The W3C working group’s main aim will be to explore various payments methods which can be used by anyone, anywhere. Emerging payment methods in both developing and developed nations alike will be evaluated and the best of them will be shortlisted. Bitcoin and digital wallets are two such payment methods which have a high probability of making it to the shortlist.

At the end of the whole process, W3C Web Payments Working Group intends to come up with a standard payment method with standardized steps for payments and communication which can be implemented on any platform, anywhere in the world.

Ripple Labs had announced its intention to join W3C to develop web payment standards earlier in February. However, many details weren’t available then.

This news was originally covered by The Telegraph