In MasterCardâ€™s Future, You Can Buy Things by Waving at Your TV

**Waqas** · September 16, 2011

If a prototype from MasterCard ever becomes a commercial product, you’ll be able to order and pay for a pizza by waving at your TV from the couch.

This integration with Xbox Kinect is just one of several mobile payment technologies that MasterCard displayed at a showcase for journalists Thursday.

While the focus of the event was Google Wallet — a payment app for which MasterCard is an exclusive launch partner — MasterCard also showed off ideas it has for mobile payments in the future.

Google Wallet combines multiple credit cards, loyalty programs and Google Offers into one place and allows customers to pay with these accounts by swiping phones at a checkout terminal. MasterCard’s prototypes, however, extend the functionality of mobile payment technology far beyond the checkout line.

A prototype app called QkR, for instance, initiates payments from just about anywhere. The app reads QR codes from posters or a TV screen and responds with an option to purchase an item. Like popular song-identifier Shazam, it can also pick up a cue from TV signals that pull up a relavant shopping opportunity.

In another demonstration, the app reads an NFC tag on the table of a fast food restaurant and allows users to view the menu and place an order directly from their smartphones.

Most impressive — or frightening, depending on how you look at it — was the Xbox Kinect prototype. To purchase a product on TV, users simply wave their hands at an icon in the corner of the screen. They can then select purchasing options like size and quantity with the same movements. After they check out, the receipt is sent to the QkR app.

“It doesn’t necessarily even have to be something that the programming is selling,” explains MasterCard senior software designer Stephen Elder.

Another application of this tech involved being able to pull up shopping menus at any time using a gesture or voice command. Elder demonstrated this by putting his hand to his mouth in an “I’m hungry” gesture. The TV pulled up a take-out menu and he ordered a milkshake without moving from in front of the TV.

According to MasterCard, there is no timeline for introducing these prototypes as commercial products. The Xbox Kinect feature, for instance, will be much easier in a future where TVs and other devices, not just the Xbox Kinect, come with wave-to-play technology. MasterCard would also need to convince TV broadcasters to add appropriate metadata to TV signals before either the Kinect or audio features would work.

For now, the prototypes are a small taste of how mobile payments could transform the experience of buying anything — and how dangerously easy it could become.

Photo courtesy of Flickr, photo.bugz

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