‘V-Engineering’ part 2: Cloud: new gateway for remote monitoring and mobile commerce

A cyber wallet can work with either contact (magnetic stripe) or contactless near field communicationo (NFC) payment technologies without requiring hardware changes at the point of sale.

E-wallets’ value-added features

An e-wallet may offer a number of value-added features including e-receipts, advertising, loyalty programs, couponing, location-based services, social media, video clips, and secure storage for proprietary data (e.g. driver’s licenses, ID cards, and others). The fact that the proprietary contents of the mobile wallet reside on the cloud and not inside the physical mobile device provides protection against the theft or destruction to the device itself.

This Internet basis also provides a real-time clock for monitoring dynamic promotions that often are time sensitive.

Our next article will examine location-based services, QR codes and user analytics

Michael Kasavana, Ph.D., is the NAMA endowed professor in hospitality management at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich. He has been researching vending technology for several years.