As technology continues to advance and become a part of every minute of our lives, it's no surprise that the next step is to further the technology of our credit cards.
Soon, we could see our phones acting in place of the traditional swipe-cards we currently tote around like our small, plastic children. There would be no more checking your statements and spending online even, you could do it all from your phone.
Systems like this are already in place in many foreign markets, however, according to a New York Times article by Tara Bernard and Claire Miller, in the U.S., "wide adoption of the so-called mobile wallets is being slowed by a major behind-the-scenes battle among corporate giants."
Companies are all vying for the right to control this market, hoping to cash in on the myriad of fees and publicity that would come with the introduction of a new system.
According to Bernard and Miller, the problem is being caused because "the stakes are enormous … small, hidden fees that are generated every time consumers swipe their cards add up to tens of billions of dollars annually in the United States alone." There is clearly a lot of money to be made in the introduction of cell-phone credit cards, but where does the consumer land in all of this?
For a system like this to work, important banking information would need to be stored on the phone itself. The way this technology functions is through linking wirelessly to payment consoles.
This type of connection presents a problem in consumer information safety, because these connections could potentially be opened when not desired by the customer, and banking and credit card information could become at risk.
Of course, the software used to create these transactions would need to be encoded with security measures in order to prevent such breaches.
The problem here lies in who is making the software and operating (as well as profiting from) the transactions made by these "digital wallets."
Bernard and Miller point out that, "Apple and Google already have payment systems — Apple's iTunes has 200 million accounts tied to credit cards, while Google Checkout has been less popular.
Both could be turned into mobile wallets, allowing users to pay for offline purchases with their Apple or Google accounts. But they would need access to the cell phone chips and the merchants' terminals.
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Apple could make its own cell phone chips to make this all happen, but Google could not because it makes only Android cell phone software, not the phones themselves."
Because the companies issuing credit cards generally do not also make cell phones, there are problems in merging the interests of credit card companies and cell phone companies without creating an increase in fees for the customer.
One solution is that this technology could be produced in such a way that a chip would be inserted into the phone and allow the customer to then make purchases using the "digital wallet" technology. However, cell phone manufacturers would have to be willing to make phones compatible with said chip.
This technology is unnecessary, and could lead to consumers having such an easy time spending their money that personal debt could increase.
Without the necessity of signing something or physically performing an action, the level of awareness that we have about our own spending habits could drop significantly.
Technology is already a significantly invasive part of our lives, and the potential of having all of our information stored within something that is as losable as a cell phone is unnerving.
However, I suppose they can't force people to use this technology other than by completing removing the availability of swipe machines from stores.
Regardless, it's important to think about how technology impacts our lives and at what point we should say "enough," before doling out our information left and right.
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