Talk about all the innovations that have happened over the last 2 decades because of the internet and how none of them relate to money transfer (except for bitcoin)

W3C is the internet-standards-body for the World Wide Web. You've likely used lots of their standards

Bitcoin exists, and Amazon has been around for more than 2 decades, why do we need web payments?

There are 4 published standards (all in draft stage) and a few more auxiliary publications from W3C's Web Payments Working Group

: standardizes an API to allow merchants (i.e., Web sites selling physical or digital goods) to utilize one or more payment methods with minimal integration. User agents (e.g., browsers) facilitate the payment flow between merchant and user, mediating the user experience and providing consistency between different merchants and providers.

: defines the validation and (where applicable) registration of identifiers used for matching purposes by other W3C payments specifications.

:defines capabilities that enable Web applications to handle payment requests. The specification defines how Web-based payment handlers register their capabilities with the user agent, how the user agent communicates with them, and what information is exchanged. Note: Based on experience with the Payment Handler API, the Working Group is discussing creation of a new UI component where payments, authentication, and other activities can occur. This functionality would generalize some of the current payment-specific functionality of Payment Handler API.

: allows the curators of a defined payment method or owners of a proprietary payment method to authorize (via a manifest file) which payment handlers may be used to fulfill the payment method. The scope of this work extends to all types of payment handlers, including native mobile apps and Web apps.

- [Payment Request API](https://w3c.github.io/payment-request/)

: standardizes an API to allow merchants (i.e., Web sites selling physical or digital goods) to utilize one or more payment methods with minimal integration. User agents (e.g., browsers) facilitate the payment flow between merchant and user, mediating the user experience and providing consistency between different merchants and providers.

- [Payment Method Identifiers](https://w3c.github.io/payment-method-id/)

: defines the validation and (where applicable) registration of identifiers used for matching purposes by other W3C payments specifications.

- [Payment Handler API](https://w3c.github.io/payment-handler/)

:defines capabilities that enable Web applications to handle payment requests. The specification defines how Web-based payment handlers register their capabilities with the user agent, how the user agent communicates with them, and what information is exchanged. Note: Based on experience with the Payment Handler API, the Working Group is discussing creation of a new UI component where payments, authentication, and other activities can occur. This functionality would generalize some of the current payment-specific functionality of Payment Handler API.

- [Payment Method Manifest](https://w3c.github.io/payment-method-manifest/)

: allows the curators of a defined payment method or owners of a proprietary payment method to authorize (via a manifest file) which payment handlers may be used to fulfill the payment method. The scope of this work extends to all types of payment handlers, including native mobile apps and Web apps.

While removing propreitary stuff isn't a goal for the specs, it is a byproduct.

We'll be going bottomsup, and looking at the smallest building blocks first.

You want a way to ensure that multiple payment processors work against the same initial payment request. Hence a need to standardize these identifiers.

A payment method should be "discoverable", and that implies a manifest of some sort where a user-agent can find more details about the payment method

Is this available?