Imagine being able to pay for your Starbucks latte by swiping your cell phone instead of your credit card...yeah, you read that correctly, your cell phone! New technology has recently been tested by various technology companies such as Intuit and PayPal that will allow consumers to use their mobile phones to pay for items ranging from a latte at Starbucks to a hot dog at a baseball game. In collaboration with Major League Baseball, Intuit was able to develop a software called "At Bat"that allows baseball fans to order and pay for their food without even leaving their seats! Fans are able to place their order and "swipe" their credit cards from any location in the ballpark by using this new application, and once their food is ready they will receive a text messaging telling them where to pick it up.
Because all of this technology is quite new, there are many questions that still have to be answered....the first one being which company will emerge as the leader in this new field. Many experts believe PayPal, which processed over 700 million dollars in mobile payments in 2010 alone, will be the one to break the bank with this new technology. However, for this to happen they will need the cooperation of credit card companies such as American Express and Visa, who would prefer to bypass PayPal as the middle man and create their own technologies with cell phone providers such as T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Over the next few years, it should be interesting to see how these technologies evolve, especially when analysts project it to be a trillion dollar industry by the year 2020.
Tyler,
ReplyDeleteI haven't heard of this new upcoming technology, but it sounds pretty cool. It reminds me of the new boarding pass technology. I don't know if you know, but there is actually a new way to check in to a flight and go through security- with your phone. Instead of wasting paper and printing your boarding pass, you can now have your boarding pass be sent to your phone through a barcode, which will be scanned when you go through security. I have actually used this before, but to tell you the truth, I am always scared that somehow it wont work, whether it's because my phone will run out of batter or because I'm scared it will freeze. Maybe I am just paranoid, but to keep myself calm, last time I tried it I printed out my boarding pass as a back up. I wonder if people will be scared to use this new technology you speak of for similar reasons. What do you think?
I completely agree that people would be paranoid but there are others who would be all for it. I guess it is all up to you whether or not this new technology will sky rocket by 2020. I think that those who decide to use this technology will be a role model for those who are more paranoid about this revolutionary change. Once people see how easy and effective this could be I think it will become much more popular. Also Tyler, I'm loving the title of your post. "A cellphone with wallet capabilities" sounds crazy and unlikely but what is even crazier is the fact that this is actually becoming a possibility in contemporary society.
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