Reading a good little PR article for Visa’s contactless payment system - with some pithy and relevant comment from the man who knows about such things – Dave Birch – I was then surprised to read the accompanying opinion piece from a ‘futurist’ which essentially laid out a rather pessimistic and conservative agenda for a world where money is largely transacted in 0’s and 1’s. When did futurology become negative? Certainly at the beginning of the Noughties, we were starting to see the effects of pessimism on adoption of new services and the inherent value of ‘newness’ amongst respondents; essentially this is the first family producing generation who believe their children will be worse off than them perhaps since the enlightenment. It now seems that even futurologists, whose businesses are built on the idea of ‘progress’ and ‘trends’ have been infected by this largely Daily Mail /Express sponsored perspective (you know the score, everything will affect house prices eventually).
To address the concerns of the commentary article which focused on the lack of contact of ‘contactless-ness’ and the perceived security issues around digital money, while it is the case that removing cash from certain transactions does remove some sensitivities to the total ‘cost’ of a good or service, this is usually observed when individuals are buying lots of items simultaneously (such as in a supermarket) rather than "pricing" a single item (and perhaps a greater effect is created by the small point type used by supermarkets for all prices that are not ‘reduced’). However, contactless payment is targeting much more the small change transactions of daily life for which ‘cash’ is not necessarily the most convenient, secure or readily available solution (especially as the inflation affecting such transactions leaps ahead of the average basket). I don’t usually carry out £8 worth of coins so I can park at a station car park for example and the card machines don’t appear terribly reliable as they require so much ‘interaction’. So perhaps on second thoughts such ‘small transactions’ are not so small – and this is an opportunity for public services to carry on their price hikes on the quiet.
On the security issue, it is interesting how quickly ‘theft’ becomes about the person (i.e. their ID) rather than the money. If someone steals your cash, you have to prove you had it in the first place and it is difficult to replace – but at least the perpetrator has no interest in you personally. In a digital theft, it is the ID of the victim which is picked (and with it access to their money) and this is something which makes digital money (theft at least) so much more personal. The money can be replaced relatively easily as there was proof of its existence (ironically the virtual 0’s and 1’s have a more "real" ontological status than solid cash) but what has been stolen is something far more valuable.
One final thought to leave with you on the subject of contactless payment migrating to the mobile phone. Such a shift is going to require quite a culture change at the mobile phone operators themselves as they become liable for the ‘security’ of devices which have access to quite so much of value. My wife’s recent experience of having her phone stolen and used overnight (before it could be reported as stolen) to ring some premium rate number in Algeria (costing a 4 figure sum) suggests that they have a long way to go before allowing such liabilities onto their own books.
Perhaps I am getting the pessimist bug too – must be the chaos of 1 inch of snow hammering local house prices.
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