Submitted by eacastel on Tue, 08/02/2011 - 20:03
Blogs have called it the end of the wallet but many people don't believe this is achievable by 2015. We will just have to wait and see. Personally I believe that digital currency will only gain relevance in the years to come and as we explore the topic by means of technology, scales might shift to different ways of measuring value and spending habits.
Mobile certainly pays a part here. According to the latest 2010 numbers released by CTIA, the US has over 300M Wireless Subscriber Connections and with a population of over 307M people ('09) you can bet that nearly everyone in the country has a mobile phone! And with smartphone penetration reaching 50% coupled with services like PayPass, PayPal, Google Wallet and others, digital currency will become a reality faster than most of us think.
Submitted by eacastel on Tue, 02/09/2010 - 13:54
Target's mobile efforts have reached a new high as the retailer takes the first step towards rolling out seamless mobile payments through 2D barscanning and tracking technology.
Target’s point-of-sale scanners make Target the first major retailer with the ability to scan mobile barcodes in all of its retail locations.
To take advantage of this new technology, shoppers need to currently purchase a physical Target giftcard either online or at the store and save its code information onto a secure account on Target's mobile site. Then, at the point of sale, mobile users retrieve appropriate barcodes to scan at checkout.
It is still necessary for shoppers to buy the physical giftcard either at the store or online but Target is already looking into providing seamless mobile payments to "reload" the value of the giftcard electronically which would completely eliminate the need to carry your wallet when visiting a Target store.
