Amazon Payments heads into meat space

Amazon plans to take its payment platform into the real world, using NFC tags to identify goods for purchase from the online store, but who attaches those tags is not clear. The service, which Bloomberg reports based on conversations with "two people with knowledge of the project", involves the customer tapping their phone …

[Drem]

Amazon Store?

Maybe we'll see a physical 'Amazon Store' where you go in, and they have one of each item available to see, no extra stock held, no risk of theft, etc. Minimal staff required, cutting down on that overhead. They could even have kindles on the walls to let you flick through books before you buy, listening stations for mucic you order to be delivered etc.

Would really cut the overheads of a high street, whilst allowing a large range of goods to be stocked, with the 'convience' of home delivery the next day too.

No instant gratification in you shopping to be sure, but I can see advantages.

P.S. anyone wanting to use this idea should apply to me, its mine now, etc.

[Geoff Campbell]

I rather like that.

Sort of Argos for the 21st Century.

GJC

[TeeCee]

Re: I rather like that.

Overlooking the bit where Argos don't actually have the vast majority of stock on display but have a catalogue.

What's wrong with that model? Nothing.......oh......wait, no excuse to use NFC tags[1].

Now imagine the size of an Argos style store in which one of everything stocked, in every size and colour, were physically on display with a tag attached[2]..............!

[1] Which I'm guessing is the only real driver here. I'm rapidly getting the impression that someone, somewhere's offering a humungous bung to the first company to do something with NFC that's actually practical, economic and makes enough of a bloody difference that someone else might take it up without the bribe attached.

[2] Actually two tags attached. You need something with a more than 10cm range for the antitheft side of things to stop all that stock wandering off.

[Geoff Campbell]

Meh.

Details, details.

[Steven Knox]

Specificity

"...if the right size of jeans isn't in the store, then the correct NFC tag should not be present either. That's unless all sizes of jeans have the same tag, which would make the technology useless for stock control..."

Not at all. Let's say your particular jean design is assigned 1234567 as an ID. The NFC tage for a size 8 could be 123456708, for size 10, 123456710, etc.

Then the tags could be used for stock control, yet if an online vendor or the store itself wanted to sell from the same tag they could simply put a "sizeable" attribute on their record for that item. You tap to buy, and it inserts the correct size from your profile or prompts you to confirm or change the size.

I really don't see how you could miss this trick. It's not exactly brain surgery. (But then again, brain surgery is not exactly rocket science, is it?)