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Mozilla announces new web payments system

Mozilla announces new web payments system

By Anupam Saxena | Updated: 8 April 2013 19:26 IST

Mozilla has announced a new web payments system, essentially a common web API, to make payments easy and secure on connected devices. In line with the announcement, Mozilla will introduce navigator.mozPay(), a JavaScript API which, according to the group, is inspired by Google Wallet's in-app purchase API except that it's been modified for things like multiple payment providers and carrier billing. It will be first introduced in the Firefox OS. After that, Mozilla plans to add navigator.mozPay() to Firefox for Android and desktop Firefox.

Announcing the move on its blog, Mozilla's Kumar McMillian elaborated that Mozilla's main goal with navigator.mozPay() was to give users and merchants choice, security, and an easy to use payments system.

The system would work in a simple manner and whenever a web app invokes the navigator.mozPay() API in Firefox OS, the device would show a secure window with a 'concise UI' following which the user is authenticated and the payment is charged to the user's mobile carrier bill or credit card. After completion of the transaction, the app delivers the product and repeat purchases are swift and easy.

The payment starts and finishes in the client but further processing and notifications happen server side, so the payment side doesn't know about the product that the user has purchased.

McMillian informed developers that Navigator.mozPay() is an experimental API that might change drastically or become unprefixed without notice. The aim, he said, is to process live payments first on the Firefox OS phones and then evolve quickly from real world usage.

The Firefox OS would bring mobile web content directly to users with web apps, so a broader payment system makes sense. The move potentially paves the way for increased popularity of ad-free content on the web, with paid content becoming an alternative as users get the ability to pay for content easily and in a secure manner.

Google used to have a service by the name of One Pass that allowed web properties to offer paid content. However, it was shut down, last year.

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