End of Credit Cards: Pay w/Your Name & Face Posted by AVCU on 4:50 PM

Yet another alternative payments technology has popped up - this time allowing you to pay a merchant by simply giving your name, and the merchant seeing your face. No waving of your smartphone at some terminal, no scannning . . . nothing. Just give your name. 

The new technology is the brainchild of Jack Dorsey, the inventor of Twitter and founder the brilliant payments company called Square.  Although Card Case, the new payment app, runs on your phone it isn't like those same clunky, phone-and-pay-pad systems being peddled by other firms. With Card Case you don't pay with your phone. It lets you pay with your name by going into a store, choose what you want to buy, and then tell the cashier your name. You don’t have to pull out your phone, you don’t have to open the app, you don’t have to sign, swipe, or wait for change. As long as your phone is with you while you’re in the store Card Case can authorize your payment without you having to do a thing. Card Case uses a new Apple technology on iPhones called “geofencing,” which notifies an app when a phone has entered a specified geographical area. Square has added several security provisions that will minimize unauthorized purchases.


Here's how it works. You need to turn on auto-payments for each individual store where you’d like to use Card Case. Your name and face appear on a cashier’s screen when you’re within 100 feet of the store. Your photo prevents a mishap if there are two Card Case users named John Smith in the same coffee shop at the same time. Finally, your phone notifies you when a purchase goes through, so if someone else somehow manages to buy something with your name, you’ll see it immediately. You set up Card Case with a credit card number, which gets charged when you make a purchase. In the future Card Case plans to expand to Android phones. 


Merchants using Square payments can accept Card Case payments, but they have to opt in to do so. At the moment, there are only 20,000 businesses accepting Card Case, and they’re clustered in big cities like San Francisco and New York. 


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