ECML v1: Field Names for E-Commerce
RFC 2706
Document | Type |
RFC - Informational
(October 1999; No errata)
Obsoleted by RFC 3106
Was draft-eastlake-ecom-fields (individual)
|
|
---|---|---|---|
Last updated | 2013-03-02 | ||
Stream | Legacy | ||
Formats | plain text pdf htmlized bibtex | ||
Stream | Legacy state | (None) | |
Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
RFC Editor Note | (None) | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 2706 (Informational) | |
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | (None) | ||
Send notices to | (None) |
Network Working Goup D. Eastlake Request for Comments: 2706 IBM Category: Informational T. Goldstein Brodia October 1999 ECML v1: Field Names for E-Commerce Status of this Memo This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1999). All Rights Reserved. IESG Note This document is the output of a vendor consortium, and is not the output of an IETF Working Group. Implementors of this specification are warned that this data model is heavily biased toward conventions used in the United States, and the English language. As such it is unlikely to be suitable for international or multilingual use in the global Internet. Abstract Customers are frequently required to enter substantial amounts of information at an Internet merchant site in order to complete a purchase or other transaction, especially the first time they go there. A standard set of information fields is defined as the first version of an Electronic Commerce Modeling Language (ECML) so that this task can be more easily automated, for example by wallet software that could fill in fields. Even for the manual data entry case, customers will be less confused by varying merchant sites if a substantial number adopt these standard fields. Eastlake & Goldstein Informational [Page 1] RFC 2706 ECom Field Names October 1999 Acknowledgements The following persons, in alphabetic order, contributed substantially to the material herein: George Burne, Trintech Joe Coco, Microsoft Kevin Weller, Visa Table of Contents 1. Introduction................................................2 1.1 Background.................................................2 1.2 Relationship to Other Standards............................3 1.3 Areas Deferred to Future Versions..........................4 2. Using The Fields............................................4 2.1 Presentation of the Fields.................................4 2.2 Methods and Flow of Setting the Fields.....................5 2.3 HTML Example...............................................6 3. Field Definitions...........................................7 4. End Notes...................................................9 5. Security Considerations....................................10 References....................................................11 Authors' Addresses............................................12 Full Copyright Statement......................................13 1. Introduction 1.1 Background Today, numerous merchants are successfully conducting business on the Internet using HTML-based forms. The data formats used in these forms varies considerably from one merchant to another. End-users find the diversity confusing and the process of manually filling in these forms to be tedious. The result is that many merchant forms, reportedly around two thirds, are abandoned during the fill in process. Software tools called electronic wallets can help this situation. A digital wallet is an application or service that assists consumers in conducting online transactions by allowing them to store billing, shipping, payment, and preference information and to use this information to automatically complete merchant interactions. This greatly simplifies the check-out process and minimizes the need for a consumer to complete a merchant's form every time. Digital wallets that fill forms have been successfully built into browsers, as helper Eastlake & Goldstein Informational [Page 2] RFC 2706 ECom Field Names October 1999 applications to browsers, as stand-alone applications, as browser plug-ins, and as server-based applications. But the proliferation of electronic wallets has been hampered by the lack of standards. ECML (Electronic Commerce Modeling Language, <www.ecml.org>) Version 1 provides a set of simple guidelines for web merchants that will enable electronic wallets from multiple vendors to fill in their web forms. The end-result is that more consumers will find shopping on the web to be easy and compelling. The set of fields documented herein was developed by the Wallet/Merchant Standards Alliance (www.ecml.org) which now includes, in alphabetic order, the following: American Express (www.americanexpress.com) AOL (www.aol.com)Show full document text