When it comes to the future, it can sometimes be hard to picture a world where technology is more advanced without going completely space-age. We can look for a future with common space travel, teleportation and flying cars like in The Jetsons, but let’s be realistic – what does a financial future look like?
This isn’t discussing how you’ll make it to retirement, either. When talking about money, it’s hard to imagine the next step. With credit and debit cards, as well as online payment methods like PayPal, it’s hard to imagine things becoming more convenient. Still, our financial world IS changing. We’re seeing more mobile payment platforms being introduced all the time, currencies like Bit Coin taking off and new credit card technology being released all the time.
This begs the question – what will credit card processing look like 100 years in the future?
The Future is Mobile
We’re already seeing tap payment methods become popular outside of the United States, but we’ll be hit with the trend harder in the future. The way of the smartphone is the way of the world, and payment systems will increasingly rise to this occasion.
Smartphones aren’t the only device to consider, either. Tablets and iPads are also players in this game, and eventually we’ll be using mobile devices to send money directly to stores. With this kind of tech comes a new wave of merchant services capabilities, and it will be an industry that is constantly adapting to the new tech coming out every year.
If we’re also thinking 100 years into the future, consider this – how far will mobile technology have advanced by then? How will that mobile technology factor into mobile payment methods?
Checks will Phase Out
It’s already not very common to see someone write a check in a consumer setting – checks are how people get paid, not how they pay for things. As checks become increasingly more archaic, the technology used to deposit them will become more advanced. In the future, a bank teller will probably never have touched a check that isn’t their own.
We already see mobile depositing becoming a thing, but the future will normalize it further. No more driving to the bank to cash a check – you do it over the phone.
This also affects credit card industries, especially when it comes to bill payment. Credit card companies will save money going paperless – they no longer have to send out invoices when everyone uploads the checks they want to use to pay their bills to their server instead of mailing them off.
More Advanced Encryption
The reason we’re seeing EMV chips becoming such a big deal is because of the encryption capabilities they offer a consumer. Their data is kept perfectly safe inside of a chip, and credit cards with chips are a lot harder to hack than outdated magnetic strips that wear out.
This is now, though. Think to the future. We’re constantly trying to figure out how to make our data safer, so what lengths will we go to in order to finally have full financial security? Also, how long before advanced technology works against us and more advanced security becomes just as hackable as archaic technology?
Non-Traditional Payment Systems
Recently, Uniqul (a Finnish tech company) applied for a patent. The technology expressed in the patent will make mobile payment systems useless, but may not be very popular until further in the future. Instead of credit cards and mobile payment methods, this technology recognizes a person based on facial patterns and then takes information from them that way, paying their tab.
There are obviously a lot of flaws to work out in this system, and it’s certainly one that could never be perfect…or could it?
As it stands, we don’t’ utilize many non-traditional payment systems, but they could be just over the horizon. This is especially true in the case of non-traditional currency, like Bit Coin. While it’s not something you use to pay your bill at Starbucks right now, it might be in the future.
The technology for this sort of payment does exist right now – take, for instance, Secret Handshake. This is a device that reads hand motions and finger signals as an indication of authorization of a sale. You don’t see this in common areas because there are obviously kinks to work out, but as technology advances and allows us to fine-tune these payment methods, they will be more common place in the far future.
All in all, technology is something that is ever expanding, and it’s hard to judge where it will be in 100 years. In the past, 100 years ago, it would probably be hard to conjure up the idea of self-driving automobiles and phones that could operate your entire life.
Who knows where technology will go in the future, but one thing is for sure – however it advances, the world of payment processing will change right along with it.
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