Every company wanted a proprietary brand that would own the market. Merchants couldn't afford to support a half-dozen formats. No dominant digital-wallet format emerged. Not so fast. My enthusiasm is tempered by two details that could derail the ecommerce blastoff.
Committees are notoriously difficult to manage.
Let alone a committee of a half dozen of the world's biggest tech companies who all hate each other. Getting fast results could prove challenging for the ECML coalition. Privacy is a paramount concern for anything to do with digital wallets. It's not clear yet how the ECML initiative will jibe with the privacy standards set forth by the W3C and other groups. Despite these issues, ECML is the best ecommerce news in the past year and it signals a turning point.