The Handshake - Trust vs Technology

"Lets shake on it" - A handshake has always been the way to seal a deal. It is a human interaction, based on trust and relies on the honor and integrity of the parties involved.

Last week an article in the Telegraph "Cash or card? Soon we'll be paying by handshake" suggested that customers may also be able to "pay by handshake" with data transmitted electronically through the skin.

It is very appealing to think that such technology can go full circle and reinstate the trust in the basic human interaction of payment, that has been replaced by the various advances in payments such as authorization, authentication, cryptography, 2 factor authentication, 3D Secure, etc, each of which brings their own strengths, levels of complexity and associated weaknesses.

However shaking hands with a stranger with embedded electrodes would, I believe, be seen by most people as rather threatening. The prospect of some form of surgery also represents a big entry cost for the consumer, and therefore it may not lead to the wide scale adoption vital for success.

The next generation of payments needs to be both trustworthy and easy to understand and use by the consumer. The technology should be behind the scenes, making the payments happen, and not getting in the way and stopping them. 

“We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.” 
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt