The following draft BIP proposes an update to the Payment Protocol.
The motivation for defining this extension to the BIP70 Payment Protocol is to allow 2 parties to exchange payment information in a permissioned and encrypted way such that wallet address communication can become a more automated process. Additionally, this extension allows for the requestor of a PaymentRequest to supply a certificate and signature in order to facilitate identification for address release. This also allows for automated creation of off blockchain transaction logs that are human readable, containing who you transacted with, in addition to the information that it contains today.
The motivation for this extension to BIP70 is threefold:
1. Ensure that the payment details can only be seen by the participants in the transaction, and not by any third party.
2. Enhance the Payment Protocol to allow for store and forward servers in order to allow, for example, mobile wallets to sign and serve Payment Requests.
3. Allow a sender of funds the option of sharing their identity with the receiver. This information could then be used to:
* Make bitcoin logs more human readable
* Give the user the ability to decide who to release payment details to
* Allow an entity such as a political campaign to ensure donors match regulatory and legal requirements
* Allow for an open standards based way for regulated financial entities to meet regulatory requirements
* Automate the active exchange of payment addresses, so static addresses and BIP32 X-Pubs can be avoided to maintain privacy and convenience
In short we wanted to make bitcoin more human, while at the same time improving transaction privacy.