When it comes to patents, I love to see what companies are thinking about when it comes to the future of their products. I work in an industry that involves patents frequently and I generally enjoy taking a possible future glimpse at something that may or may not be coming out for current or future hardware. So, what has Sony decided to tap into?
With Sony’s announcement of going digital only by January 1st of 2028, it behooves them to tailor future technologies to help harness this type of ecosystem. So recently Sony unveiled a patent that allows you to tap either a gift card or credit card on a controller tied to an account to allow you to use the funds or credit to purchase directly from the intended products store. Whether this is potentially coming to current hardware or future, time will tell.
Now some positives are a convenience factor. To get a gift card and just tap it rather than feeling like I’m scratching a lottery ticket, makes me like this idea. This also allows parents who use the gift card method, a way to control how much may be spent on media. This also may help some children feel involved in a way. Though I can think of a few great things about this I can think of more use cases for some problems.
How will the credit card be used in this situation. Will in automatically make the purchase, Will it have a text to phone to provide a code to proceed, what safety measures will be applied? I don’t want my child to scan my credit card multiple times without my consent. The next thing that comes to my mind is Could someone scam you somehow with this? Could someone take the technology from the controller and go around taking money using NFC, (Near Field Communications), somehow? I could see people removing the method from the controller and making some skimmer or scam people somehow.
The idea of this controller feature seems to be a step forward, but we need to fine tune upcoming issues that could arise. What are your thoughts on the Sony Patent? Would this make you want to buy it or think twice? Will Sony safeguard this process to prevent children from ordering accidentally or on purpose? Let us know your thoughts on this topic.
Image Source: Eureka. patsnap.com
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