Phones are only the beginning. RFID tags are already so small that they could fit in a watch, or even under your skin. (Such implants aren’t science fiction: one techie, Amal Graafstra, has written about how he installed RFID tags in his hands and RFID readers on various doors in lieu of locks, so that he wouldn’t have to bother with keys anymore.)
Eventually, biometrics might allow you to carry (or implant) nothing at all. A Swedish start-up called Quixter has outfitted stores at Lund University with a system that lets students pay by having the vein patterns in their hands scanned (vein patterns are less susceptible to fraud than fingerprints, since fingerprint dummies can deceive scanners). Iris scanners have potential, too—they’re hard to trick, and eyes, unlike hands, don’t change much with age, says Hector Hoyos, the founder of Hoyos Labs, which works on identity-authentication technologies. Hoyos thinks payments could one day be processed automatically—imagine your eyes being scanned as you enter an amusement park, the price of admission being deducted from your bank account as you get in line for your first ride.Of course, changes like these raise big privacy questions: if we pay for everything by phone or biometrics, companies will be able to track our movements and personal data to an unprecedented degree. Scott Rankin, the chief operating officer of Merchant Customer Exchange, the consortium behind CurrentC, says users will be able to alter their privacy settings to ensure that information about what they buy isn’t used or shared. But as Epstein, the computer scientist at SRI, points out, many people won’t mind sharing data if they believe they’re being compensated with good deals. “Most people are fundamentally lazy and will do whatever is easiest,” he told me. “What’s going to be easiest is not being anonymous.”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member