Research question
What evidence is strong enough to count a deployment?
Proposed method
Separate a published specification, declared public profile, vendor integration documentation and independently observed use. Record protocol version, entity, scope, date and environment for every observation.
What this cannot establish
A public profile is a declaration, not a completed transaction. Named partnerships, endorsements and roadmap items cannot be counted as live merchant adoption.
Publication gate — Research HOLD
Validate source scope, check unresolved conflicts, document the sample and review conclusions against the underlying observations. A finding may be published only at the level its evidence supports. Incomplete studies remain drafts, noindex and outside the production sitemap.