Designing Mobile Payment Experiences

Chapter 7. Payments on the Horizon

As discussed in Chapter 1, since the dawn of history we have been searching for better and faster payment systems. Each of our innovations was driven by the need to find ways of getting the things we want, using the materials and tools that were available to us at the time. From minting gold coins right up to alternative digital money, quantum leaps in technology have improved the efficiency of daily transactions and changed our spending behaviors.

We can’t predict how we will transact in the future. Sci-fi books and movies have occasionally proven to be eerily prophetic, as is the case with the “MultiPasses” used by the characters Korben and Leeloo in 1997’s The Fifth Element (Figure 7-1). The MultiPass was a handheld cartridge that could be used as an ID, an access key, a travel pass, and a payment card. It had their names, pictures, and medical information on the front, and gold computer chips on the back, which would be inserted into a reader at a reception desk to verify their identities and tickets so they could be granted passage on an intergalactic cruise. Of course, we will set aside that Leeloo’s MultiPass (Figure 7-2) was a forgery, and she was actually an elemental being made of pure light.

Figure 7-1. In The Fifth Element, Korben and Leeloo presented their MultiPasses (courtesy of Columbia Pictures)

Figure 7-2. Closeup of Leeloo’s MultiPass ...