Iot

The cashierless Amazon Go concept is inspiring fear in traditional U.S. retailers, but the idea is already mainstream in China — with one chain opening 300 locations in just two years.

Dominic Venturo, chief innovation officer at U.S. Bank, shares his vision for digital banking ten years from now. It includes ambient computing – interconnected devices, machines and sensors that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people.

The rapid adoption of voice assistants only adds to the notion they could one day be disruptors in commerce, payments and financial services.

Voice assistants are on a fast track, with ownership of home devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home surging to between 20% and 25% of households from a mere 1% in about two years. The rapid growth is inviting keen interest in many circles about the potential for voice assistants to spark disruption in commerce, payments and financial services.

Starbucks has reported an impressive number of in-store sales in the U.S. coming through its mobile app, a figure that has climbed quarter after quarter since the 2009 introduction of the Starbucks Card app — until July 2017, when it reached 30% and has not budged from that number since.

Microchip implants could be considered the ultimate form of mobile payment — skipping the smartphone altogether in favor of giving people bionic abilities. And a small segment of the population is already lining up to try it out.

Many of the same protections for mobile payments, such as tokenization and single-use keys, can come into play to protect in-car payments, according to Jim Carroll, chief technology officer at Mobica.

The fridge, car, home assistant, smart watch, etc., will be able to initiate digital payments both online and on-location, and some will even be able to accept payment as well, and payment companies will need to respond, according to Michel Léger, executive vice president of innovation at Ingenico Group.

As Diebold Nixdorf continues its evolution from decades as a leading manufacturer of standalone ATMs to a maker of omnichannel-connected banking, it’s created a new service leveraging the Internet of Things.

A combination of software, operating system and development tools can turn in-vehicle "informatainment" systems into payment gateways, according to Jim Carroll, chief technology officer at Mobica.

Chicago's government agencies are a mess of disconnected legacy systems that smacks of old-school municipal malaise and revenue loss as people trek to midcentury government facilities and wait in line to pay.

Even if most consumers aren't leaving their plastic cards at home in favor of mobile wallets, the very idea of using a mobile wallet is no longer cutting-edge. But a few companies go the extra mile.

The Amazon Go store isn't just reinventing retail; the company's recent acquisitions of Ring and Blink indicate Amazon wants to reproduce its model of camera-fueled commerce in consumers' homes.

In the developing world, connecting payments to the Internet of Things could have an immediate and transformative effect on people’s lives.

Electric cars have long faced an uphill battle, though TrueCommerce and AeroVironment are trying to remove one barrier by making it easier to shop and pay for fast in-home chargers.

There are still regions where contactless and EMV cards are slow to roll out, and Mastercard is working to bring these markets up to speed so that they are ready for future innovations.

As billions of devices interact in trillions of transactions, autonomous payments will be required because there simply won’t be enough humans on earth to look at them all, writes Vaughan Emery, founder and CEO of Atonomi.

Retailers used to be able to hold onto their physical presence as a differentiator against Amazon. In the past year, Amazon has taken even that advantage away.

Digital assistants are increasingly commonplace, and the trend is pressuring merchants and issuers to figure out how to keep up with consumers' interest in conversational computing.

Organizations handling payments or personal data are increasingly moving to cloud-based technology, and cyber criminals are taking advantage of that transition in finding new attack vectors.