>>I thought Passport or some .NET superset of Passport was going to be the mechanism for doing this.
>
>Being able to charge someone money someone through the "universal authentification system" is a risky proposition to me. I don't think its something that security and privacy consicous individuals will jump on.

Which means it won't work, because if a vast majority of users aren't signed up this model won't work.

I don't really see why there's that much concern about payment. Most of the content you get on the Web today is already free - why start charging for things that are already free and just to have them repackaged.

I think there will be charges for proprietary interfaces - ebusiness type solutions, but the MyServices thing just sounds like a silly idea from a bunch of geeks who have nothing better to do than stare at their cell phone all day to see whether they got a message... how much information do you really need at your fingertips to make your life better?

All this discussion seems to focus on consumer authentication. The bigger issue is business authentication which will likely work the same way it does now - you sign up with an account and you pay on that account.