XMLPay

XMLPay is the "XML Payment Specification."  It was developed by a loosely associated group of vendors including Ariba and Verisign.  The XMLPay specification is designed for sending payment requests and responses through financial networks.  The purpose is to help Internet merchants process a broad range of Web-based payment types, including credit debit card, purchase card, and Automated Clearinghouse, or ACH payments, for B2B and B2C e-commerce. 

The XMLPay Specification consists of three parts. (1) 'XMLPay: Core' is the heart of XMLPay. It defines the basic XML datatypes needed to unify B2C and B2B payment processing applications. (2) 'XMLPay: Registration' captures automation of payment-related enrollment functions, such as merchant registration and configuration. (3) 'XMLPay: Reports' specifies mechanisms for automating merchant transaction reporting functions in the payments back office.  The typical user of XMLPay is an Internet merchant or merchant aggregator who wants to dispatch credit card, corporate purchase card, Automated Clearing House (ACH), or other payment requests to a financial processing network. Using the data type definitions specified by XMLPay, a user creates a client payment request and dispatches it -- using a mechanism left unspecified by XMLPay -- to an associated XMLPay-compliant server component. Responses are also formatted in XML and convey the results of the payment requests to the client. XMLPay includes support for digitally-signed XML objects.