Last week something very important for the cryptocurrency ecosystem happened, but unfortunately it was buried deep down under the "China - JP Morgan Chase" whirlwind which took Bitcoin for a spin.
Now, that the mud has settled, it's time to look over that thing.
In-Btowser API Payment Implementations
You may not heard of W3C, but it's one of the most influential (albeit notoriously slow in taking decisions) organizations on the Internet. It's the one that establishes standards and good practices. And last week W3C announced that the in-browser payment API implementation has been moved from "Under Consideration" to "Development". What that means, in laymen terms, is that the consortium is now implementing standard payment methods in all major browsers (Chrome, Safari/webkit, Microsoft IE, etc).
This is HUGE.
And I mean, HUGE-HUGE.
Because not only it will contain API calls for fiat payment methods, like credit and debit cards, but it will also have room for cryptocurrency based payment methods. We could see Bitcoin-enabled payment sites using this technology as soon as the middle of next year.
How Does This Work?
If you are a merchant, you can build your site in a certain way, implementing certain extensions (APIs) that will signal you will accept payments in a variety of ways: Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and, why not: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Steem. Now, a potential customer visits your website and sees all these methods listed like some sort of a drop-down field. All he has to do now is to pick "Steem" from that drop-down and the payment process will be done with Steem.
There are two levels of this process: the server and the client. Both these should be covered in order for the payment method to be implemented. The credit card companies and online payment processors will probably be the first to implement that (they're corporations, after all, they do have big resources lined up if they need to) and the crypto-currency ecosystem will have to rely on a distributed, community effort. But as soon as W3C specs are published, we may start working on these extensions.
This is a fabulous step ahead, not only for bringing the crypto-ecosystem on the "white" side of commerce, but also for boosting consumption of the tokens which are now traded based pretty much only on speculation (i.e. too few economical processes involving the exchange based on buying or selling goods).
In less than a month, on October 23rd, we will see a first demo of this in-browser payment API, from early bird partners like Airbnb, Google and Mastercard.
And according to persons close to the matter, cited by Coindesk here, we may see a relevant adoption of this tool by the middle of next year.
image source - Pixabay
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
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