An announcement from PayCircle describes the release of the PayCircle Payment Web Service Specification 1.0 for public review. The specification contains WSDL sources, XML schema definitions, and supporting documents, together with use case scenarios. PayCircle is "a vendor-independent non-profit organization; its main focus is to accelerate the use of payment technology and to develop or adopt open payment APIs based on XML, SOAP, Java and other Internet languages. The PayCircle API specifications provide standard payment interfaces for merchants, content and application service provider with the expectation of making payment transaction easier for mobile users, which is essential for future market growth. The PayCircle consortium was formed January 2002 to define standard APIs for mobile payments, regardless of the payment systems used by application or service providers. Currently the large number of incompatible payment systems has hindered the growth and uptake of m-commerce. PayCircle defines open and uniform interfaces based on existing standards."

Bibliographic information:

• PayCircle 1.0 Specification. Payment Web Services - Concepts. Reference: PayCircle-ACA-001-002. 5 pages. 07.10.2002. "Provides preliminary documentation for the concepts underneath the WSDL and XML source files."

• PayCircle 1.0 Specification. An Extract of the Payment Blueprints. Reference: PayCircle-AB-005-002. 10 pages. 07.10.2002. "An extract of a PayCircle blueprint document that is currently being created. Although all the terms and definitions are not yet finally approved, it will give you an introduction into m/e-payment."

From the announcement 2002-10-09:

The expected value of and diversity in the types of goods, content, and services that can be supported and delivered via electronic commerce and m-payment are enormous. Mobile / Electronic commerce, now estimated to generate revenues of 1.96 Billion US$ world wide, is expected to grow to 28.0 Billion US$ within the next five years. PayCircle's focus is to help enable M-Commerce via standard APIs for mobile payment. PayCircle API specifications provide standard payment interfaces for merchants, content and application service provider with the expectation of making payment transaction easier for mobile users, which is essential for future market growth.

"CSG Systems has been actively supporting and promoting the PayCircle approach from the beginning, and the publication of this specification defines a clear path forward", said Malcolm Lewis, Director Mobile Industry, CSG Systems and PayCircle Board member. "It defines a common payment approach for the industry, in addition to the various proprietary systems that exist today. We believe the flexibility offered by an open approach will help accelerate the adoption of electronic commerce, and specifically m-payment."

"We are also quite pleased with our liaison work established between PayCircle and other organizations like Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF), Radicchio and Infrared Data Association (IrDA), ", said PayCircle President, Hans Wolf. "Our successful collaboration efforts with industry fora will help guarantee alignment with other industry standards, and eliminate the type of confusion and fragmentation seen in the industry over the past several years."

PayCircle is a non-profit organization represents more than 30 companies, including CSG Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Siemens and Sun Microsystems as PayCircle Board Members. PayCircle membership is open to anyone who is active in the mobile payment market such as application developers, payment service providers, merchants, content providers, manufacturers of payment systems, suppliers for mobile infrastructure and mobile devices, network operators, banks, credit card companies, and others. This open approach guarantees that the necessary interfaces can be developed in a cooperative manner.

From the V1.0 README document: "Logical Structure of the Payment Web Service. The logical structure of the specified Web service(s) is as follows: (1) There is Web service called 'payment'. This port type provides operations for immediate payments (debits) and credits. Immediate means there is no prior reservation. This Web service is very simple and in particular stateless. (2) The 'amountSession' portType represents a service session between the merchant and a particular customer. An amountSession manages reservation of money for later consumption.., Thus, the 'amountSession' port type has operations 'reserve' and 'debit'. Since the amount session needs the remember how much has been reserved or debited so far, it is stateful."

From the January 23, 2002 announcement: "Today, Hewlett Packard, Lucent Technologies, Oracle, Siemens, and Sun Microsystems established the PayCircle consortium to provide mobile device users worldwide a standard means of making mobile payments, regardless of the payment systems used by merchants or service providers. PayCircle will promote the growth of m-commerce by making payment transactions easier for mobile users. Until now, the large number of incompatible payment systems has hindered the spread of m-commerce. PayCircle intends to define open and uniform interfaces based on existing standards. Mobile device users can access their network operators' or payment service providers' mobile commerce offerings without having to install any new software. Security will be maintained by using mobile communication built-in security mechanisms, such as SIM cards, for authentication..."