The coronavirus is now effectively disrupting our lives to the point that we have to adapt to change not previously thought of; an example would be how to pay things in our everyday lives. Would this virus finally push us to the shift to contactless payments on a global scale? It sure looks like it.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is pushing every business to implement contactless payment methods to combat the spread of the coronavirus or popularly known as COVID-19. This is to minimize the spread of the virus in terms of money being circulated so many times, and you don't know if the last person who held it had the virus with them already.
Amazon's Idea to Go Cashierless Might be The Way to Go
We already covered this here at Techtimes a few days ago and would like to reiterate that maybe this is one of the solutions that we can shop with ease when it comes to wholesale grocery shopping. The use of sensors and cameras to detect what people buy and the non-usage of people to man the cashiers and transactions would be a good step to making it a little it more safe than usual amidst the virus outbreak without disrupting the lives too much.
Central Banks Quarantine Physical Bills
The coronavirus has let banks all over the globe quarantine physical bills in efforts to stop the spread of the virus when there is still no cure in sight. This is all well and good, but what about the majority of the human population who don't have access to contactless payment methods and countless businesses who only go for "cash only" policy. That would become a problem later down the line, especially if not everyone had access to that payment.
Some Ideas for Contactless Payments
In our digital age, it is simple enough to get a means of contactless payments, but not all of them are good enough to contain the spread of the virus. Examples of contactless payments are credit and debit cards or anything that use radio-frequency identification or RFID. Samsung Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay are good options since they don't need to be pressed firmly to the scanner to make the payment, which also helps mitigate the disease.
Digital Currencies Now Needed More Than Ever
The use of cryptocurrency has always been a hot topic for people. Still, because of COVID-19, this might change and would be a welcome opportunity for people to explore more of these digital currencies that the majority of people don't use altogether.
Cash might become obsolete for the time being, and given that the virus is still slowly spreading, no matter how much you try to contain it, what makes contactless payment a bad thing really since it's going to help us. As a wise man said, modern problems require modern solutions.
