FAPI + FedCM

Issue #689 open
Joseph Heenan created an issue

There is an effort going on at W3C to define a new browser API for iDPs to provide identity information: https://fedidcg.github.io/FedCM/

There’s two things here that I think are relevant to the FAPI working group:

  1. It is likely that at some point Browsers will break OAuth2 flows when they block the use of link decoration user tracking, and FedCM is the fix for this
  2. The FedCM API provides some potential advantages, like we may be able to use it such that the Browser (or the OS in a native app RP) is able to display a list of banks the user has previously logged into, giving the user an easier way to select a bank than the current nascar issue of 40+ UK banks and 100+ Brazil banks.

There are some slides from OSW with background on FedCM here: https://tcslides.link/OSW24-FedCM101

I think the main thing here is to raise the profile of this work within the FAPI working group. We don’t think FedCM as it is defined/implemented today quite works for the OpenBanking/FAPI type use cases, but from discussions at OAuth Security Workshop there is definitely the possibility to make some changes so it does work. One helpful thing might be if banks or fintechs would join and participate in https://www.w3.org/community/fed-id/

Comments (6)

  1. Nat Sakimura

    Nat to follow up with Gail/Mike to how liaison would work with W3C so that OIDF rep can participate in their meetings.

  2. Joseph Heenan reporter

    Yaron at Raiffeisen Bank International has been prototyping FedCM + FAPI - I spoke to him about it at EIC, he’d run into some issues, but I shared the approach we’d talked about with Sam/Tim (I think?) during IIW and moving closer to that approach (basically using FedCM only as an account chooser, and treat the “is logged in” query to the iDP more like “has the user logged in before”) seemed like it would fix his issues.

  3. Log in to comment