The theme of this project was "the future of money" - understanding how payment systems are changing and the impact this will have on mobile devices and server systems. We have a "dream" of a world where there is no payment systems - everything is done automatically in the background with individual consent and no cumbersome security systems. For example, to buy something from a store you might just walk out with the item. Or after a meal in a restaurant one could just leave and have the amount automatically deduced. Of course these concepts are impossible in some ways - but as ideals they produce a host of interesting technical and social problems to be thought through. The first year of the project focused on surveying existing work and creating a discussion at Mobile life around the topic - we hosted workshops with speakers from University of Edinburgh, Yahoo Research and the University of Brunel. We also organised a workshop at the CHI conference this year titled “#Chimoney”.

The project continued exploring along two stands. The first was an empirical examination of the current payment practices using video recorded with wearable cameras. The second was to build a prototype payment system for small payments. The focus of the project was to move from a project around vision to actual studying and building.

Contact:  Barry Brown