NFC: Not Just a Football Conference, Your Phone is Your Wallet
What happens when you mix your bank account, your favorite places, where you are at the moment and your cell phone? Well, if the credit card companies, cell phone makers and wireless providers in the US have their way, everything will happen.
It is pretty scary that most people do not realize that the credit cards they are carrying in their wallet or purse have the ability to communicate wirelessly, as a recent DC Fox 5 Report shows:
While the story goes into the dangers of RFID, or Radio Frequency Identification, only at the end of it do they start to discuss the future of contact-less (or as they stated, wireless) communications of your banking and credit information. What they did not talk about is the technology that is already being used around the world to allow people to pay for things simply by waving their phones at the payment system, Near Field Communications, or NFC. When you get ready to pay for something, instead of whipping out your credit card (or heaven forbid, cash) and swiping it, you simply wave your magic phone and it deducts the money from your account.
It seems harmless enough at first. In fact, even Google wants you to do it with your phone so they can not only help you pay for stuff, but also keep track of where you are:
However, aside from the potential security concerns with keeping your direct bank account information on your phone at all times, how far do you want a vendor like Starbucks or a company like Google, Facebook or Apple to reach into your pockets and brains to know exactly what you want, where you want it, when you get it and what you do with it? It might be really nice to simply walk into your favorite coffee shop at 7:20AM for a jolt and find your drink waiting for you without you having to lift a finger or say a word, but that reminds me of a certain scene in Minority Report:
Not exactly how I want to live and I certainly do not want my eyeballs sucked out to fix my credit rating...
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