Payments: would you pay for goods with your car, or fridge?

payments
Image credit: Talaj / Shutterstock.com

Payments and new payments technology is seeping into many aspects of our lives. Some years ago, when Near Field Communications (NFC) was dividing the payments debate and we tended to ignore the convenience factors and focus on speed.

Many articles were written about whether an NFC enabled device was a second or two faster than a conventional one – and the question was: did it matter?

Now, though, payments technology is embedded in more than just cards. Cars are now being produced with payments technology built in and, according to this Infographic by Transaction Network Services, 57% of those surveyed would certainly use an in-car payments system to buy things such as parking and fuel. As you might guess, men were more open to the idea than women.

After the US, Australia is the country that is the keenest to adopt new ways of paying from or with the car, and the consensus is definitely that the majority of people are looking for secure, convenient, easy and quick solutions.

The key to success in payments is convenience but also the solution needs to be intuitive. We are used to paying for things in the conventional ways. We pay when we are in a shop, or online or on the telephone and only 25% of respondents said they would use a voice assistant to pay for items. This may, of course, be because there is still some worry about the security of these devices (perhaps because we are talking, therefore we intuitively think someone could be listening)?

Encouragingly, at least if you are a manufacturer, smart devices such as fridges are quite popular as a payments device. 45% of respondents said they would be happy to pay for goods via the fridge’s WiFi enabled touchscreen or appropriate app.

It is an interesting mix of people being open to new ideas and payments methods and people being nervous about how secure various new techniques are.

It is also interesting that the Infographic and the underlying survey does not touch on the one thing that we all have with us, all the time, which is connected to companies whose lifeblood is security – the telcos.

Surely, we would all like to use these, after all telcos are the ones who can properly deliver our mobile lifestyle and they are already enabling payments from the car or the fridge.

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