Micro Payments
charter-ietf-micropay-01

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).