The future of payments....

Yesterday after drinking my morning juice smoothie, my front door knocked! Sadly it wasn't a big bunch of roses from a florist or a new clothes delivery but it was the postman with a letter for me to sign.

I opened the letter and in it was a Barclays PayTag!
Basically it is a small stickable tag, that you stick it to your mobile phone or anywhere you wish really and then can use it to tap onto the card reader machine and pay for your goods!

It really does raise the question though of future payment methods! Maybe one day the Bank of England will stop producing banknotes and coins and it will be all electronic from a mobile phone device.

I'm not so sure if I am going to put the tag on my phone....! I think it will increase the chances of theft to handsets - not only will they go and take your phone but they'll try get a few transactions from your bank account! Barclays state 'Your PayTag is safe and secure. So don't worry if it gets lost or stolen - you're protected against fraud.'

The question is should I start to use it? 

What do you all think???

Visit barclaycard.co.uk, to get a credit card with PayTag.

Revolutionizing the world with BIG DATA!

In this modern world, it is so crazy to think that our tweets can be geolocated and mapped by the Government. They can compile data of our eating habits, whether we are healthy, our complaints about our local cities and much more! What a way to future think and implement new government policies! Hopefully big data analysis will help implement policies and legislation into government that is needed by real people and can actually make an impact on this world! Analyisng this data has a real potential to show governments and decision makers the World's behaviours and gain an insight like no other.
Even multinational companies use analysis of big data to lower their heating costs - such as Tesco who now use sensors to ensure lights and heating are used to most minimal through using IBM's data analytics.


There are so many thinking points around this subject of Big Data and a few thinking points come to mind.

• Is it a milestone that we have finally reached or is it the culmination of a Big Brother culture? 
• Is it really a revolutionizing concept or is it a hindrance in the long run? 
• Do we want technology companies to analyse everything we say and keep a record of it?

Either way you feel about Big Data, analysing big data is getting easier and more efficient and the effects of it in local governments will be evident over the next few months and years.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23253949