You get to the front of the grocery line with 2 bottles of milk, a carton of eggs and a bottle of coke in hand and there are 14 people impatiently queued behind you. You try to juggle your valuable products, fumbling through your bag for your credit card – but it isn’t there. If only you had a more compact, hands free device attached to you for you to pay.
Luckily, wearable payment devices have evolved dramatically and are now taking over the world.
Today, nearly all purchasing is done without cash. Currency has evolved to the point where people can now pay with just a touch. iPhone apps, watches, keys and even rings have been developed to make buying things easier for society. In Australia, 80% of face to face transactions are now contactless, and the number is only rising.
But why are they becoming so popular? What is it about contactless payment that makes it so appealing? Part of what makes these devices so functional is that they are compact, can easily go unnoticed, they are not battery operated and they require minimal effort to use. This convenience appeals to the changing ideals for society, much like online shopping and online streaming. As advertising and demand for products increase, so does the amount of products people buy. With all of these purchases, society is beginning to gravitate towards devices that cater to this.
One of these devices is Halo. Halo is a ring designed by BankWest so that customers could make transactions more easily. This ring won Australia’s Most Innovative Banking Product in 2018, have a zero-liability policy and are waterproof up to 50m. On the Westbank website, it says that you need only to ‘fist-bump the terminal’ in order to pay. Halo costs only $39 and comes custom fit to your finger. This is one of the most evolved contactless payment designs that are changing the way the world pays.
With the ever-evolving world of technology, contactless payment is taking a major step into the future, becoming the most convenient, affordable, and compact method of transaction. Contactless payment is undoubtedly the way into the future.
