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Beyond Cash & Cards: Invisible Transactions in a Frictionless Economy

  • Writer: horizonshiftlab
    horizonshiftlab
  • 1 day ago
  • 11 min read
Close-up of two hands exchanging a credit card over a desk with papers. Background shows a blurred person on the phone. Warm lighting.
Source: Mikhail Nilov via pexels.com

Get ready for a glimpse into a future where transactions are invisible and your home is truly autonomous. In this solo episode of Signal Shift, Raakhee delves into the world of integrated payment systems and the advanced capabilities of digital twins for our living spaces. Inspired by the Institute for the Future's "Commerce of Tomorrow Today" report , she explores how AI and sensor technologies are making biometric authentication (like paying with your face) the new norm for everything from restaurants to public transport. Raakhee unpacks the rising trend of "machine native wallets" and "car IQ pay" where your vehicle becomes its own secure payment system for fuel, parking, and even groceries. Finally, she reveals how companies like Autodesk are working to mainstream digital twins for buildings and homes, promising a future where your smart home hub manages everything from ordering new filters to syncing with your purchased devices, minimizing administrative burden but raising new questions about data privacy and convenience.




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Episode Transcript:

Horizon Shift Lab (00:00)

Hello and welcome to Signal Shift. In today's episode, I want to look at is integrated systems, specifically payment systems.


And I really was inspired to talk about this today based on the Institute for the Future's report called Commerce of Tomorrow Today, Pushing the Boundaries of Commerce. So it's a report where they have looked into this world of commerce and what's happening there. And it was the scenarios and stories in there that speak to what the world could be like in a few years. so what I did is I got inspired by some of the points they're making in the report, and then I went to find actual signals, right, that speak to this and show us that this is coming or happening. So we have a couple of that coming up.


So I think number one was AI and sensor technologies and their advancement, right? And basically, in essence, identity verification, really becoming about the live assessment of all things, physical elements, surroundings, and just using real world data to confirm authenticity, Both products, but also the purchaser, of course, your face, In essence, the tagline being that we may start paying with our faces in places like restaurants pretty soon, right, as a form of biometric authentication.


Now, we've all experienced this in some ways. Amazon's Just Walkout technology has been around for a few years. I was just at a Lakers game in Staples Center, and you you just tap your card and grab your things and walk out of the store. And it's super convenient, but it is fascinating to think again of the data and the verification that sits behind it. But it's there, right? We've seen it in airports, of course, using facial recognition. Some interesting things happening in this space. A company called PopID is one of the companies that is actually creating a new payment system where customers can register for an account with a selfie, okay, and they use spatial recognition to verify, your payments for whatever you want to buy, right? Food, whichever different spots.


Now, it of course depends on which companies they are partnered with, in the United States. So they are really rolling out and testing at hundreds of kiosks across the country. And apparently it's pretty fast. It's seamless as one would expect. So that's one. That's a company called PopID.


And then of course, the Sam Altman's World ID or World as he calls it. It was called WorldCoin and it is expanded to 26 million users globally, including 12 million that are verified through orb scans. And his thing is verification through iris scanning. They plan to deploy 7,500 orbs across the US by the end of this year.


And they have an assembly line to build these out in Texas, I think, again, we know this, but I think it's going to be upon us in the blink of an eye is, again, we will be paying for things with our face. become the norm in time, as so many things have, right? I know some people.


I'm still slowly catching on to kind of using the Apple wallet for payment and not a card. But I think we're going to skip that step and go straight to kind of biometrics. I think of self-checkout. And a lot of people thought it would not budge many years ago, 10 years ago, eight years ago, even seven, six years ago. People thought self-checkout would not take off.


And they would sit there and people wouldn't use them. And I was adamant in my own life that it was going to work and there was going to be a point where it is just so convenient and easy. And ultimately, that's the direction in which we as human beings move. And it's taken a couple of years, but now I really see that shift in the last few years, is you see people using the self-checkout lanes. It is working. I know there's issues with theft and other things that have to be figured out and they are trying to work on.


But again, I think that convenience and the speed it works and people are using it. And I think of that as a very similar thing here where we think I'm not going to do that or I'm going to opt out of the system or it won't take off. And like I said, I think before we know it, we'll simply just go into a restaurant and know that your face is scanned and that is linked to your account and you can't really escape paying that bill. It's going to come off.


I think fascinating times lie ahead with that. A fear that some people have, of course, is around identity theft. And this becoming even more complicated now because it's not just stealing your data, it's stealing your data linked to your face. So is there a bigger risk around identity theft is a big question. And data privacy and all those things still remain biggest concerns and fears around this. Having said that, I think this is coming.


But this very technology can also be built to combat some of those things, right? And that's, I think, the interplay that we'll see. It's really who has the better technology and keeps up and keeps a pace. And I think it's like a chess board, like a game. It'll keep changing, right? Sometimes it's the bad guys who are doing a little bit better, but we'll quickly catch up and have new technology and implement that. And then soon enough, they'll catch up. And that's the story of life.


In the world of integrated payment systems, our face becomes a key one. But another one that's really important is, of course, our vehicles. And I spoke about our cars and data privacy on a previous episode we've spoken about, really driving up to, I think it was the Tesla Diner and how you'd be able to park your car. It would get charged up, your groceries would be loaded in there by the shopper while you're watching a movie, right? Where your food is brought to you in the movie, just that level of lifestyle that I think people will adopt.


But think of this as the next layer of your car will pay for gas for parking lots to park at a station that gets you to the train. So imagine you want to get a train ticket to somewhere, but you go to the parking lot as you enter the parking lot. It's really your car's automated system that is linking to their payment system. It has your ticket by the time you park and get out of your ticket for your train is on your phone already and you're sorted.


That's what's going to happen, right? Same thing with groceries, not only some grocery driving and we've spoken about this concept so many times. It's been around for so many years, but if you think about it, Instacart has really kind of pushed that boundary, right, in terms of delivery of groceries or even pickups, right? And that's something, for example, I engage and I do grocery pickups.


And how much easier if it was simply just a drive in our automated system, bags are loaded, you know, and done, right? And really it's your car that is the payment system. And it would use multi-factor authentication that would combine things like your biometric signatures, but also your behavioral patterns. I spoke about this last time with the data privacy and the kinds of things that your cars actually capturing about what you do and all the data that's been collected. And that'll be used to build these profiles. again, good is, will be in ways where it protects you, it customizes and personalizes your life experiences. The bad, all the bad we've mentioned already, So signals in the space.


One is that the leading payment solution for vehicles and fleets. They're called Car IQ. They are basically working on creating a connected ecosystem, right? And these machine native wallets, they call them, So these wallets that will enable machine to machine transactions, your car to everything else. So they've got a proprietary product called a Car IQ Pay. And it provides vehicles with this trusted identity and secure payment capabilities allowing your vehicle to connect directly with banks, merchants to purchase fuel, tolls, parking, and more without the use of a credit card. And the way they envision it is that you'd have these purses and there'll be wallets in the purses. And one wallet could be focused on your rewards and other is on payments and other is on any other sort of incentives that might be applicable.


According to a consulting firm, the connected vehicle payment market is expected to reach $600 billion by 2030 and enable vehicles to control purchases. So that's what's coming next.


Not only will your cars drive you everywhere, they will pay for the things that have to be paid for your cards or cash around.


The last signal when we're looking at sort of these integrated payment systems, we spoke about our face, your car. OK, the third one is your house. this concept of, you know, smart home hubs, right, that do everything. You know, you come back after your morning run and your home greets you and it confirms that your mortgage account went off. It reminds you that your water filtration system needs new filters, but it'll put in an order for you and you verify verbally. Advanced Alexa, we've seen this. We have a form of it already. Okay, so it's basically advanced Alexa Nest, there's a lot less administrative burden on us, but a lot more risk again.


All these things will also be taking care of a lot of your daily administrative burdens. And I think that's the trade off people will make. Now, when we talk about things like this and in the concept of digital twins for your house or for buildings, right? And think about it for your, your apartment, your home. It sounds very pie in the sky, like what is happening and how I ever get access to this digital twin. So the signal I wanted to share was about Autodesk, right? Autodesk is the San Fran software company behind AutoCAD, Revit, Fusion 360. These are basically all architectural and design software tools, really phenomenal, fantastic design tools. And what they're doing is they are developing a commercial solution to create digital twins.


So last year, they released a cloud-based technology platform called Tandem. So Autodesk Tandem aims to make digital twins that are going to be accessible to more owners and operators.


As it currently stands, I think this is going to be a browser-based tool. They are currently experimenting with their own Toronto office and they're aggregating data from the office buildings management system and looking at the study, right, and the design and how is operation of this gonna work. They occupy two floors of this building in Toronto and they have a twin just for their two floors. A twin does not have to be for the entire building. Each person in their little spot can have their own twin. So, yeah, Tandem allows basically the creation of different views that give you access to information that you would care about.


If you look at the HVAC system, it's going to have data related to that. Some of it is going to come from the Revit model itself, some from other data, like manual data that's been inputted. You it might even have things like the user manual, right, that'll pop up right there. mean, always, is it not a mission to find a user manual for anything from your washing machine to your new device that you buy? So imagine all of that residing on the system. Every time you buy a new product, once it gets scanned, it's linked to your account, that account is linked to your home system. When you buy the new product, you come home, you're plugging it in at home, it's on your system already. The user manual is there. You don't have to go and look for it. You don't have to hunt for the model number. It's there, your specific one. You don't have to worry about sending the email for your warranty, your guarantee. All of that is automated.


So that's just, you know, it's a very obvious, simple one that's relatable to all our lives, but these are the kinds of things that would sit on the system, right? And then I spoke about that example of if you need new water filters, right? This is the sort of system that'll now allow the tracking of that or play a part in the tracking. And it'll speak to the other systems within your house, right? And be connected to really the internet of things, the devices and the products and even for all the things that'll exist on your digital twin system, the installation date, the serial number for things, everything's gonna be on there and it'll be linked to the other systems and devices and literally be talking to each other, right? So it can always be that hub, that smart home hub So yeah, this is really, really exciting.


I wanted to speak about this one because we all know Autodesk, right, we've heard of them. So it's great to see a big company trying to create a solution that's going to be able to come ultimately for the use of all of us, I hope, or at least will be able to come to managers and owners of apartment buildings for sure, right? I imagine them taking it up.


They really want to make digital twins mainstream for the industry. So as I mentioned, sometimes what we talk about seems very pie in the sky. The point of sharing these signals was to say, it's happening. Here's where it's really real. It's really tangible. And based on that is where we can throw out these estimates of five years, six years, 10 years for things. And often it happens a lot faster than we think.


So these are some scary but interesting things that are coming our way in this world of integrated pay systems and how are we going to be paying for things. So let me know what your thoughts are on today's episode. What did this bring up for you? Are there fears coming up or is there excitement? What do you think and do you have any cool signals to share?


Sometimes we have people comment and share some of the cool signals and tell us things and we appreciate knowing that, right? It's about the data sharing, the data exchange that we can all do. So thank you so much for being here and let me know what you thought about me doing this solo episode. Bye for now.

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