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Pay the robot, or else

Dave Birch, on his Digital Money blog, has found what may well be the fintech geek's ultimate fantasy - a payments terminal in the shape of a life-sized android.

Developed in Japan (of course) by NEC, the robot lets you make payments by selecting the appropriate e-money icon on the touch screen panel embedded in his torso before swiping your NFC-enabled mobile phone across his hand.

According to the Pink Tentacle blog, NEC is hawking the fella around to theme parks- he even has cameras for face recognition, which could be used to recommend rides based on the person's age and gender.

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Comments: (3)

Elton Cane
Elton Cane - News Corp Australia - Brisbane 14 November, 2008, 15:23Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

Very cool. But is it an Autobot or a Deceptacon?

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A Finextra member
A Finextra member 15 November, 2008, 00:42Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

It looks like it won't be long before we see Wally-the-Robot.

Cleveland looks like a good initial deployment for a tooled up version, they could use them for debt collection and foreclosures.

They are thinking of renaming it Cleverlend.

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A Finextra member
A Finextra member 15 November, 2008, 01:49Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

Another item of a similar ilk.

A certain shampoo marketer (what's my name?) will soon have a gadget on the shampoo shelf at the supermarket which you can use to analyse your hair condition and type. It'll give you a product recommendation suitable for your hair.

The initial gadget is budgeted at $100, so we won't have a speaking head with luxuriant flowing hair very soon, but as soon as their opposition cottons on...it'll be heads up in the shampoo aisle.

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Matt White

Matt White

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