Payment Request API

Kerwin · May 12, 2024

I've been doing some research and came across the Payment Request API and am thinking of using to for payments. You can find details of it here:

Payment Request API

This specification standardizes an API to allow merchants (i.e. web sites selling physical or digital goods) to utilize one or more payment methods with minimal integration. User agents (e.g., browsers) facilitate the payment flow between merchant and user.

www.w3.org

From the sound of it the API should reduce the amount of work needed to implement new payment methods on a website. Apple seem to support it with Apple Pay as well as PayPal and Google Pay and those three payment methods are the ones I'd like to support.

I'm curious to hear what people think about it?

CraicnCaine · May 13, 2024

Hi Kerwin,

The page you've linked to is a document of standards for building a payment request API. However it sounds like you want to implement a payment gateway into your site?

If so, then Stripe is a really easy to use and implement solution.

Kerwin · May 13, 2024

CraicnCaine said:
Hi Kerwin,

The page you've linked to is a document of standards for building a payment request API. However it sounds like you want to implement a payment gateway into your site?

If so, then Stripe is a really easy to use and implement solution.

The payment request API is meant to be an API that allows you to implement one or more payment providers on your website with the same code so you don't have to manually implement multiple different payment providers and thus saves a lot of time. I'm not sure if Stripe supports it but as I said in my original post Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal do support it and that is enough for me at present.

antropy · May 13, 2024

Kerwin said:
I'm curious to hear what people think about it?

A standard here sounds like a good idea.

Paul.

CraicnCaine · May 13, 2024

Kerwin said:
The payment request API is meant to be an API that allows you to implement one or more payment providers on your website with the same code so you don't have to manually implement multiple different payment providers and thus saves a lot of time. I'm not sure if Stripe supports it but as I said in my original post Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal do support it and that is enough for me at present.

The link you posted is to the w3 standard for a payment API, not an API itself. It is a document that outlines best practices to consider when building a payment API.

However, if you are looking to take payments on your site or app, you will need to integrate with a payment processor.

There are many, but I'm mainly familiar with Stripe (it's very popular).

From a cursory Google, it looks like Stripe is compatible with Apple and Google Pay, which are services to facilitate the process of providing card information in a more convenient way.

I recommend doing some further research before finding a payment processor that you are happy with so that you can ensure they are compatible with Apple and Google Pay.

Hope this helps.

CraicnCaine · May 13, 2024

antropy said:
A standard here sounds like a good idea.

Paul.

Totally agree Paul. Standards are brilliant, and all the more important when building services responsible for billing and processing payments.

Kerwin · May 13, 2024

CraicnCaine said:
The link you posted is to the w3 standard for a payment API, not an API itself. It is a document that outlines best practices to consider when building a payment API.

However, if you are looking to take payments on your site or app, you will need to integrate with a payment processor.

There are many, but I'm mainly familiar with Stripe (it's very popular).

From a cursory Google, it looks like Stripe is compatible with Apple and Google Pay, which are services to facilitate the process of providing card information in a more convenient way.

I recommend doing some further research before finding a payment processor that you are happy with so that you can ensure they are compatible with Apple and Google Pay.

Hope this helps.

I think you misunderstand me. The document I linked to defines the standard and Apple, Google and PayPal all follow and support the standard so that you can use the standard linked above with each of them therefore reducing the amount of code.

Here is the documentation (as an example) for Apple Pay which uses the Payment Request API for accepting and processing payments.