The online new is no longer absorbed into society with the unquestioning rapture of the 1990s. Neither should it be, especially when it comes to new ways to make and receive payments.
Low-cost, low-fee transactions are not a "solved" problem in federated online communities. Every community server raises funds using PayPal, Patreon or various other "tip" portals rather than integrating payments directly into their systems, forfeiting significant fees along the way. Creators still sell on Amazon, or other centralised portals, while promoting their work via multiple social channels. And little of that is available to creators working and living in the global South.
Nothing here is connected or integrated. All of it costs more than it needs to.
The logic of open payments is that instead of every website using the extensive banking infrastructure of credit cards and an authentication process involving multiple fee-charging intermediaries, payments are instead made via interoperable digital wallets. Individuals manage cash in and out of their wallets in whatever ways their service-provider supports.
The protocol for interacting with these wallets uses the open payments architecture, and each website must then manage interaction with these APIs. That often involves a lot of duplicated boilerplate code, not just at the transaction level, but also in defining and managing products and fees, authenticating payments are received, and then acting on that authentication.
This is tedious even with mature and well-documented payment libraries, but in a new protocol can be confusing, frustrating, and a barrier to adoption. Such barriers - if the incentive is sufficient - often produce new centralised intermediaries to act as an interface to that complexity. Best to get in early with an open source alternative.
The purpose of the Interledger Foundation Ambassadorships is to support early-stage efforts at building bridges into the adoption and use of the open payments protocols. My Ambassadorship is all about enhancing accessibility to a technical protocol that most shouldn't need to know about to experience value from it.
Putting new payment systems into use is less about telling people, than putting it where they most need it as simply as possible.
My project, Hop Sauna, is an open-source template stack ready for custom development of community-moderated Open Payments-enabled web shops, including a base server and client, with documentation, to support rapidly creating new types of federated commercial social applications.
My technical deliverables are:
- Open Payments web shop template stack.
- Open Payments Python SDK and template components.
- A dedicated documentation site for the template.
The first step along the way is a base template stack, which is already available for use, along with all the documentation required to develop and extend it.
This foundation will become Hop Sauna, which will integrate the Open Payments API, along with full digital product and purchase management. The objective is that sellers add their wallet / API keys and then the stack manages everything for them:
- Digital product creation, registration, and pricing (including multiple currencies),
- Purchase process between service providers (wallet services) for seller and buyer,
- Payment authentication and administration for the seller,
- Digital product distribution for the buyer.
The template manages an exchange, authenticates that exchange and then approves distribution. The specific nature of what is distributed, and how, is a factor for the developer to build. It is their unique "product". Developers will not have to implement any part of the product or payments process.
Effectively, it will be a foundation to many of the required coding challenges in the server and client, permitting standardised exchange of digital goods.
Towards the end of my Ambassadorship, I will begin looking to the next phase of my work, which is ensuring that the stack supports the needs of creators. I will run a small creator's workshop where collaborators will discuss their particular requirements and allow me to ensure that the stack is able to fulfil these needs.
If you want to get involved, I will need code reviewers, and - especially for the open payments SDK - technical collaborators to speed up development.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please get in contact.
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