Micro Payments BOF (micropay) Monday, November 8 at 1530-1730 =============================== CHAIR: Amir Herzberg DESCRIPTION: The Internet is quickly becoming the prefered method of delivery for information and on-line services. The growth of this industry is resticted by the limited availability of secure online payment mechanisms, especially for small amounts. Micropayments are designed to allow charging of small amounts, where the minimal fees of credit-card payments are unacceptable. There have been, and still are, many attempts at providing a micropayments solution, however so far none of them was successful, and in particular none of the deployed systems seems to be able to reach critical mass of buyers and sellers. Furthermore, even if one or more of these systems gain popularity, the lack of standardization may slow down their availability. In this BOF we'll review some recent micropayment markup standardization spec from the W3C, and discuss whether the IETF should attempt to contribute standards in this area - i.e. should we create a micropayments WG (and if so what would its charter and goals be). AGENDA: Reports on the W3C Micropayments Markup spec and implementations of it Thierry Michell from W3C who is in charge of this activity will describe it Amir Herzberg from IBM will present release 1.3 of IBM Micro Payments implementation of the W3C Micropayments Markup spec Other implementations may be described as well as comments about the spec Reports on open designs which are proposed as basis for potential IETF standardization Amir Herzberg will present the IBM Micro Payments design Other designs may be presented Discussion of the goals of (micro)payment standardization activity in the IETF Mark Manasse (Compaq): what we're (MilliCent) hoping for in a standard Use the IBM Micro Payments design as basis to a standard Or, open discussion to alternative approaches and select one (or some combination) first Limit to micropayments or cover also larger payments? Attempt to agree on rough charter and goals