Contactless Payments & Visa

Read this post about contactless payment technology and how it relates to credit card companies (Visa in particular) and thought I should make a note, since Visa is contributing to my scholarship and I may get a chance to directly ask them about this, which will be very interesting. This technology is highly relevant to travellers for obvious reasons - it saves them from having to wear a moneybelt bulging with local cash while trying to figure out which note is which. Judging by the widespread adoption of EFTPOS in NZ, I'd say that a move to contactless payments here may not be so far-fetched...

In terms of a Timespot-like device, imagine if you could book, pay for and get personally location-specific directions to your hotel, all in one go! After having read other travellers' reviews of the place, of course. Then again, after putting all your eggs in one basket like that (so to speak), you really wouldn't want to lose it or have it stolen. The upside is that all the devices should be easily trackable by a central operating server or the mobile service provider, so as soon as one has been reported as stolen, the police can be directed to where the thief is, provided the device is still turned-on and in one piece.

Sounds great, doesn't it? Now we just need to make it really user-friendly, get a really fantastic marketing team, and find out who's going to fund it all...

Technorati tags: contactless payment, mobile