According to stats from Mastercard, there’s some 17 million Brits now ready to pay for goods with wearable devices. That’s over a quarter of British shoppers, who are probably already familiar with tapping their smartphones against card machines up and down the land. They’re currently trying contactless payments with a ring, watch, bracelet or keyring, as you can see below…
The contactless devices are still in the pilot stage right now, but there’s been a 42% growth in the number of retail locations accepting contactless across Europe. Indeed, in the UK, 36% of all in-store transactions are contactless. In this test they chose the Netherlands because 80% of terminals in the country accept contactless and more than half of all payments there are made with contactless.
Right now we can already pay with some wearables, but there’s a large majority – myself included – still using old-school plastic. Why? Well, I’m not totally sure on the full reasons for this, but what I can tell you is that the phone has made yet another “thing” redundant.
Remember when we would have to decide, before we left the house, if we were going somewhere where we might need a camera? Now the smartphone IS the camera. We don’t need a separate one. We don’t need a separate music player, or a computer for most of the time – we can browse on the phone. It’s become our mobile games machine too. Sure, there’s still consoles, but gamers can get their kicks on a smartphone during the train ride to work. They can try online slots which don’t require any special rules and are usually free to play too. Slots have many cool features, depending on which game you choose to play. These games are pretty fun and you can easily try poker, blackjack or baccarat. Some games have real dealers.
So your phone is now your casino, your camera, your friend-maker, your payment card, your TV, your movie theatre, your radio, your music library, your computer and.. oh yeah, your phone too..