I could imagine something like an IBAN protocol - open an IBAN link as in iban://AB26374838388 directly with your banking app and auto fill the bank transfer menu. Only add the amount of money you want to transfer.
No idea what other implications that would have e.g. for security though
Main problem I see is that as it stands it’s insanely easy to forge a SEPA mandate. Ever had to fill one out? It’s literally just a piece of paper saying “I, John Doe, allow XXX to take money for services rendered from my acount AB1234. [signature]”. The wonder of legacy processes built for companies with fax-based workflows…
I believe only some “trusted” commercial customers are authorized to turn in SEPA mandates (I know my ISP went into some bankruptcy proceedings and lost their ability to use their SEPA mandates for instance), but still, that makes me somewhat wary about who I give my IBAN to. I’d certainly not put it up online for anyone to see.
I thought about that, but I think it’s actually more error prone, because people might just be setting ?amount=32 and leaving out currency which might lead to unexpected behaviour. Implementors tend to interpret this differently and one app might take the default currency and the other might fail to accept it, and that kind of different behaviour is a common source of security issues. Having a single unified parameter that must always contain the value and currency “solves” that issue.
There’s still plenty of steps that your bank app can (and will) take to verify this is as intended. Requiring the user to “parse” the URI is not scalable anyway, the app needs to present the information clearly (i.e. “Do you really want to transfer 123.45€ to IBAN abcd, you have not transferred money to this IBAN before, the IBAN indicates a bank in <country>” where the money amount is clearly highlighted).
I could imagine something like an IBAN protocol - open an IBAN link as in iban://AB26374838388 directly with your banking app and auto fill the bank transfer menu. Only add the amount of money you want to transfer.
No idea what other implications that would have e.g. for security though
Main problem I see is that as it stands it’s insanely easy to forge a SEPA mandate. Ever had to fill one out? It’s literally just a piece of paper saying “I, John Doe, allow XXX to take money for services rendered from my acount AB1234. [signature]”. The wonder of legacy processes built for companies with fax-based workflows…
I believe only some “trusted” commercial customers are authorized to turn in SEPA mandates (I know my ISP went into some bankruptcy proceedings and lost their ability to use their SEPA mandates for instance), but still, that makes me somewhat wary about who I give my IBAN to. I’d certainly not put it up online for anyone to see.
There’s a standard that does this in form of a QR code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPC_QR_code
True, my bank also supports this. I already saw QR-Codes on some invoices but never used it… will try it out next time.
Oh, add an
?amount=32€as well as atext=Pizzaparameter and you’re almost there …Separate
?amount=32andcurrency=Euroto add currency support.I thought about that, but I think it’s actually more error prone, because people might just be setting
?amount=32and leaving outcurrencywhich might lead to unexpected behaviour. Implementors tend to interpret this differently and one app might take the default currency and the other might fail to accept it, and that kind of different behaviour is a common source of security issues. Having a single unified parameter that must always contain the value and currency “solves” that issue.Dammit we’ve just made UPI
Idont’t think that’s a good idea, too many peoplr quickly pressing pay and then they tealizef only afyer paying thay there’s an extra 0
There’s still plenty of steps that your bank app can (and will) take to verify this is as intended. Requiring the user to “parse” the URI is not scalable anyway, the app needs to present the information clearly (i.e. “Do you really want to transfer 123.45€ to IBAN abcd, you have not transferred money to this IBAN before, the IBAN indicates a bank in <country>” where the money amount is clearly highlighted).
You know, it’s good to put failsafes and all, but at some point it’s just PEBKAC.
Ah yes, PEBKAC, the most common error after ID-10T.