When money gets under your skin - W.I.R.E - The Wire

Money is dead
Long live money
ID code. Most have no batteries, siphoning power from the
radio query to transmit their response. Long lifetimes
make them viable for human implantation. And once they
are installed in your arm or hand, you simply wave to pay.
THE HUMAN PURSE
All these biometric technologies have cultural and technological
hurdles to overcome before mainstream consumers
will adopt them. Yes, they could shorten checkout times, and
you’re unlikely to lose your eyes, voice or hands as you might
your wallet. But fingerprinting technology still has negative
associations with criminality. Privacy, accuracy and security
fears could also impede the take up of voice, face and iris
scanning systems – it’s easy enough to cancel a credit or debit
card if your account details are stolen from a company’s computers,
but body parts are a little harder to replace. As for having
a chip implanted under the skin? Well, one dreads to
think how gory muggings could become in future. Until our
bodies become walking wallets our mobile phones will have
to suffice. The next generation of handsets include near field
communications technology, allowing people to pay by
holding their phone near a terminal.
The way we borrow or raise funds is changing
too. Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and RocketHub
allow charities, artists and other creative types to access
pooled donations from thousands of people. Remarkably
large sums have been raised. For example, 13,000 Kickstarter
users recently stumped up 1 million US dollar to fund
the production of an iPod Nano wrist-watch strap.
Peer-to-peer banking is a slightly different prospect.
Loans are offered at substantially better rates than tra-
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