A Payment Architecture for Decentralized Data Spaces Based on Gaia-X

The creation of decentralized data spaces opens up enormous potential for the data economy. The Gaia-X initiative aims to bring values such as data self-sovereignty, trustworthiness, and interoperability to those data spaces. However, enabling financial transactions in data ecosystems supported by data spaces based on Gaia-X is still a topic to be addressed. This paper proposes an architecture for payment services in data spaces based on Gaia-X. This architecture was developed based on use cases from two projects within the Gaia-X 4 Future Mobility project family, but it should also enable the implementation of payment services in other data spaces, with a focus on B2B ecosystems. Requirements were elicited from those use cases, selecting suitable payment methods and defining the relevant criteria for structuring an architecture compatible with the Gaia-X principles. The proposed architecture was verified through stakeholders’ feedback and one test implementation, demonstrating suitability to two Gaia-X B2B data ecosystems that are structured on data spaces with fundamentally distinct infrastructures. The contributions of the proposed architecture add to advancing standardized payment services within data spaces based on Gaia-X and reducing barriers to entry for new participants in such ecosystems.