Ubiquitous Transactions – Financial Future and Accessibility

This short presentation was created for the Wearable Computing Solutions panel at the M-Enabling Summit 2016. It introduces some new and upcoming standards that could simplify financial transactions and thus making them more accessible.

Standards

Willy Wonkas’ Chocolate factory is a great example of something done on a one-off basis. Anything’s possible, but the cost, interoperability, and expandability are greatly limited.

This chocolatier could be anywhere in the world. While the product is unique, the standardized techniques, tools, flavors, and shapes give chocolate lovers a consistent and delightful experience.

Driving the Future

• Web Payments
• Nearby API
• Financial Data Services
• Authentication

W3C Web Payments

• How the W3C is trying to standardize payments on the internet
• Re-imagining payment network architectures
• Interledger – The protocol for connecting ledgers
• W3C Web Payments Interest Group

Current Mode

The current mode of payments involves a user sending money to a receiver via a third party (i.e. Visa) that transfers money from one account to another. This works, but gives the sender and receiver no flexibility or competition for a better rate. Learn more at: The future of web payments (.pdf)

Flexibility

The Web Payments Standard proposes a method for consumers and businesses to choose their monetary style, their bank, their best cost/return, and escrow agency. But how do you make this scale?

A Network of Networks

The WebPayment standard includes details on how these networks work together, much like the internet. For more information on this, please visit the WWW2016 presentation by Adrian Hope-Bailie @ahopebailie The future of web payments(.pdf)

Google Nearby

Google’s Nearby API is a proposed standard for letting devices discover and interact with each other. It uses a combination of Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, Wi-Fi and near-ultrasonic audio to communicate a unique-in-time pairing code between devices.

Nearby Potential

• Automatic payments
• Discover landmarks
• Locate friends
• Share information
• Interact with other devices

Proximity detection and interactions open new possibilities. This is especially true as devices are able to work together with minimal interaction by the consumer.
For instance, a car would be able to pay parking or send money to a pizza restaurant as they pull into a parking space.

Web Beacons

• Web Bluetooth API
• Directs user to a specially designed web site for app-like experience
• Dynamic content instead of a simple string/locator
• Resources:
  • Physical Web
  • Google Beacons
  • Beacon Inside
  • The Physical Web explained on YouTube

Financial Data API

Intuit’s products simplify the user experience by making secure requests to various financial institutions to get a user’s account data. Industry collaboration has made this
handshake possible. Now a consumer can process their tax return, check multiple account balances, apply for loans, and control their finances easily. Finicity provides account aggregation to other developers.

Security

• Authenteq – networked identity verification 
• Offla – mobile payment fraud detection.  
• Google Authenticator
• Analyze user interaction to avoid robots – TurboTax looks at how the user interacts with the product. It can detect a robot by the random activity and will trigger verification. This prevents the human users from having to deal with CAPTCHA and other security checks.

Financial Transactions

• Greater flexibility and account management
• Simplified Transactions
• Device to Device Interactions
• Proximity-based Transactions
• New Security Methods