Credit Cards: Americans Do Leave Home Without Them

One thing we know about the future of fintech is the everything is going to be connected, even if intermittently. The Internet-of-Things (IoT) will be a platform for payments., for sure. Even cards. Here’s an example. American Express
AXP
is launching a card with built-in communications in South Korea so that customers will never leave home without it by accident! In addition to credit card payments and Bluetooth location finding, the KB Kookmin Card will also help you to find a your mobile phone with a ringtone through the smart button at the bottom of the card and gives in an app push notification when disconnecting (in case you walk away and forget your card). The card, which can be charged through wireless charging, seems to me to be to an interesting example of what economists refers to as the “Sailing Ship Effect”.

Sailing Away

The Sailing Ship Effect refers to the impact of steamships in Victorian times. While in the long run, sailing ships were replaced by steamships, except for leisure, when the steamships first came on to the scene they led to a final burst of innovation from the sailing ship world, which was then stimulated into building some great ships (eg, the famous “Cutty Sark” that you can see in London). Perhaps we are now seeing this in the world of smart cards, as they enter their final age before being overtaken by smart phones, the cloud, blockchains or whatever.