Tag Archives: Mobile Payments

Innovation or Not – Amazon One

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Amazon One Biometric Payments

I came across another payments-related invention that Amazon is releasing into the wild. Yes, it is based around biometrics, but before you start getting all freaked out, it doesn’t use an implanted RFID chip or even facial recognition. No, Amazon One as it is referred to, connects a scan of your palm to your phone number and your credit card.

Once you’ve set this up at one of the Amazon Go stores currently piloting the technology, you’re all ready to go. From that point forward you can enter the Amazon Go store by hovering your palm above the reader and then use your palm on the way out to pay (and receive your receipt by text message I assume).

While you can connect your palm to your Amazon account so you can track purchase history, you don’t have to. Your palm scan is encrypted and stored in the cloud for future use.

Still not sure how it works?

Check out this explainer video:

The tagline for the service gives you an idea of the third party applications that Amazon hopes to pursue with this technology:

“Enter, identify and pay with Amazon One.”

So, what do you think? Innovation or not?


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Genius of Rewarding Customers for Eating Other People’s Pizza

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Genius of Rewarding Customers for Eating Other People's Pizza

Dominos is riding the creativity train yet again, with their latest creative marketing idea.

Following on the heels of Dominos Hotspots and Dominos Zero Click Ordering, they now have come up with a great idea for getting people to download their app onto their phones and to ultimately order their pizza.

When it comes to ordering pizza, the phone is on its way to being replaced by the app. But which app?

When ordering pizza by phone at least you could still use the same phone, but just dial a different number if you wanted to order a different pizza.

But if you want to order a different pizza using an app you have to download and install and configure a completely different app. NOT as easy switching to a different pizza place when ordering by phone. So, if an app helps to lock people into reordering pizza from you instead of trying the pizza from some other pie place, what do you have to do?

You HAVE to get people to not only download your app and install it, but you’ve got to get them to start using it.

A lot of places try to overcome this inertia by offering a discount on the first order made using the app, but this isn’t always a strong enough incentive.

Domino’s solution to this problem?

What if we rewarded people just for eating pizza, even if it’s not ours?

Sounds crazy, right?

Well, that’s exactly what they’ve done with their latest Points for Pies promotion. Now, if you download the Dominos Pizza app onto your phone AND join their rewards program AND take a picture of any pizza once a week for six weeks using the app you’ll earn enough points to get a free medium two-topping pizza. But, to add a sense of urgency, you must earn your 60 points before the 100 million points run out, which probably works out to about 2-3 million people participating before the points run out.

Supposedly the app uses artificial intelligence to detect pizza in the photo, but I have a sneaking suspicion it will give you points for taking a picture of just about anything. I don’t eat Dominos Pizza, so let me if you can take a picture of anything funny and still get your points. 😉

So, what do you think? Will this promotion drive app downloads, and more importantly, rewards program signups and app usage and pizza purchases?


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Apple Touches on a Potential Innovation Integration

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Apple Touches on a Potential Innovation Integration

Recently Apple announced its intention to acquire Authentec, a biometric authentication company. Apple was in a real hurry to complete the acquisition and it makes you wonder whether Authentec’s fingerprint authentication technology will make it into the home button of the iPhone 5 and possibly the iPad Mini in the coming months.

If Apple were to integrate the Authentec technology into the home button on the iPhone 5, the iPad Mini, and eventually the iPad 4, then it would not only create a handy way to make the devices easily personalized for multiple users of the same device (or just a simple password-free login for a single user), but purportedly the technology also has the ability to recognize multiple fingers (allowing for the home button to potentially achieve multiple functions), and to serve as authentication for mobile payments (most likely via NFC – Near Field Communications).

That would mean that Apple would add a lot of new functionality with the integration of this tiny piece of hardware, several software updates, and another tiny piece of hardware for NFC. But more importantly, these tiny pieces of hardware and software could make the computing experience more personal, and more naturally personalized as you move around the environment into different applications.

I know it is only a replacement for what could or can be done with a password, but I would love to be able to have apps like Netflix personalized based on whose finger was used.

This could become a great example of flexible design and innovating for the future present if they launch the iPhone 5 with these technologies. That would show that they started the design process with this as only a possibility but decided AFTER the technology looked ready to actually integrate it into the shipping product, and remained flexible enough to integrate the component near the end of the design process – something that is very hard to do, but very powerful.

Are all of these potential innovations ranging from the minor (login) to the transformative (speeding up mobile payment adoption) likely to make the cut for the iPhone 5?

I guess we will wait and see what happens on September 12th.

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