Technology and automation aren’t just aspirational states. They serve the purpose of freeing up the human brain to focus on the important stuff — such as inventing the next big thing, or expanding a business and the national economy, or simply taking the time out to smell the gardenias or have coffee with a friend. Ultimately, it is all about convenience!

This state of grace is closer now than ever before as we programme our devices to talk to each other, make increasingly more important levels of buying decisions, and create immersive experiences that allow us to transact without leaving the virtual world.

As the world’s first Museum of the Future soon opens its doors in Dubai, it brings home the reality of being a part of a living pilot project, transforming not only the way we interact with each other but also the way our devices interact. At its simplest, in Dubai we see this in an RTA app that lets you check public and mall parking availability on your smartphone, even as you drive there guided by the friendly digital navigator.

To a payments processor, the Internet of Things (IoT) is a place where every device is a payment device and any action can signal a transaction. It is a channel, just as a point of sale (POS) machine is one. The difference is that now devices are equipped with a newer type of front-end interface with the merchant and consumer and a more sophisticated back end, with core elements of security, speed and cost-effectiveness.

In a simple use case, a patron in a restaurant orders French fries off the digital menu and pays using a mobile wallet. In its early days, that seemed almost like prestidigitation. Today, with enthusiastic participation by payments processors, a lot of us do this as a mundane process.

The Internet of Everything

The next step is the Internet of Everything where digital sensors in everyday appliances connect to remote systems — including industrial machine learning systems and other types of intelligent hardware — to order and pay for products and services either directly or via smarter mobile devices.

An SME’s storage unit, for instance, keeps track of potatoes available using smart sensors. It is connected to the sales and marketing system and has learnt from this interface that for every 50 pillow packs of fries sold, 20 medium-sized potatoes are used. It also knows that about 45 packs are sold each day.

Using pattern recognition, the storage unit predicts that by Wednesday, you’d be flat out of potatoes. Being an intelligent employee, the storage unit talks to the potato supplier’s system and orders potatoes, makes an entry into the digital inventory, and notifies the accounts department of a payment to be made, or possibly even approves the payment from your bank. All this information is also available for you, the owner or manager of the SME, to view on your mobile phone while you are travelling from one meeting to another.

As the business owner, this leaves you free to concentrate on business development, which is the most optimal use of your time.

Let’s count the transaction devices in this example: the intelligent storage unit, the inventory system, the accounting system, the supplier’s smart warehouse, your mobile device and the bank’s internal systems. All connected and interacting with each other — the Internet of Things.

A complex matrix of interaction

As inter-device transactions increase, this will facilitate more networked connections between people, data, processes and things. This complex matrix results in the simple action of a smart refrigerator sensing that the milk carton is close to empty or expiry and ordering a fresh one of your favourite brand.

Because this interconnected world still needs to deliver goods to their destination, vendors are now delivering via smart unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones. Tomorrow, this could be done using smart driverless cars.

The next level is even more complex, intuitive and interactive. One example is the laundromat in the US that uses a mobile app to tell you the status of machines in your area, books one for you, makes a secure payment, alerts you when the wash cycle is finished, lets you start the spin cycle remotely, and pings you when the clean laundry is ready. This is not the future, it’s happening today.

It does everything except perform the sniff test on your shirt to tell you when you need to wash it. Then again, this too might be possible via monitored biorhythms and behaviour analysis.

If transactions are the connector between the virtual and real worlds, payments are the backbone, or the electricity that powers the exciting possibilities of IoE.

Payment processors are stepping up to this challenge by ensuring that our systems are accessible by new channels, potential new data security and privacy challenges are assessed and overcome, and validation of each transaction is not just bulletproof but also frictionless. Go, smell the gardenias.

Bhairav Trivedi, Group CEO of Network International