We know about contactless mobile payments. We've recently seen the creation of a ring for the same purpose. But now one of our most useful and indispensable accessories is also getting into the mobile payments game. Announced at SXSW in Austin, Texas on Sunday, but used at the Pro World Surf League Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast in Australia on Tuesday, Visa's prototype wearable brings mobile payment capabilities to your face!
Visa's payment sunglasses have an embedded NFC chip that connects to a prepaid card with reload capabilities. The prototypes can be used at almost any contactless payment machine.
NFC is the leader in nearfield communications and is the most common form of mobile payment technology. It requires the payment device to be within millimeters of the reader, which also means you have to take off those sunglasses every time you want to pay with them.
There is no need to charge the glasses' battery as the NFC chip is passive and draws power from the reader.
The security for each pair of glasses includes Visa tokenization technology, which replaces the user's identifiable payment with unique encrypted numbers for each payment. There's nothing, however, to stop someone from using the sunglasses once they get their hands on them. In the event of theft, you should contact your credit card issuer and cancel it.
For now, however, Visa has no plans to expand the program beyond the pilot models in Australia.
