Transcript 0:00 [gentle music] The bad guys are out there, right? 0:05 They aren't going away, and they're looking right at all of your money, right at my money, your money, everybody's money, and they're trying to get into our digital wallets, and they have a lot of reasons to do that, and there's a lot of uptick in fraud, and the numbers say they don't include just to move into contactless payments. 0:25 They're trying to get into everything. 0:27 [upbeat music] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation, with your host, Peggy Smedley. 0:49 Hello, listeners, and welcome to today's edition of The Peggy Smedley Show. I'm your host, Peggy Smedley. Well, it's an interesting day today. 0:57 You know, we're gonna be listening to a great debate out there, so hope you're all planning to watch that. I know I will. All right, so this month on The Peggy Smedley Show, we are talking all about first responders. 1:08 But since we are heading into a new topic of smart cities for next month, I thought I would get, uh, the discussion started a little bit early on this segment today. 1:17 So I'm gonna dive right into what is happening and how we are changing the way we commute, specifically how touchless is becoming more prevalent in our cities. 1:28 But first, let me talk about who our guests are going to be today. 1:31 I'm gonna be talking to Michael Walton, Industry Solution Executive for manufacturing at Microsoft, and then I'm gonna wrap up the show with Rafael Salmi. He's the Global President and General Manager of Richardson RFPD. 1:46 So stick around. We've got some awesome guests, as always, so it's gonna be a great discussion. 1:51 So earlier this year in April, MasterCard completed a study that shows nearly eight in ten say they use contactless payments. 2:01 What's more, between February and March, touchless payments grew twice as fast as non-contactless transactions in grocery store and drug categories. 2:14 So this shift in consumer behavior comes as a direct correlation to the desire for more cleanliness and safety at the point of sale. Now, no surprise there. The tides turned back in March. 2:28 Now, there is an increased concern from all of us consumers on using cash due to safety reasons. So kind of ironic because just a year ago, we were talking about concerns related to safety and security of contactless. 2:45 So kind of interesting where everything's going on here. But here we are today. We're seeing generally positive perceptions to contactless as currently as a cleaner way to pay. 2:58 The MasterCard study suggests that this trend will be here to stay. Now, I don't think any of you are surprised by that. 3:06 According to the numbers, seventy-four percent say they will continue to use contactless post the pandemic. Now, let's jump ahead to July twenty twenty. 3:18 Visa completed research of its own, and it narrowed in on touchless in transit. The numbers shows that there was a whopping a hundred and eighty-seven percent increase. 3:32 Now we're talking an increase in contactless transactions for transit fares between April and June. 3:39 So globally, Visa now has more than five hundred active transit projects, and Visa has helped cities launch tap-to-pay solutions over the course of these projects. 3:52 And Visa has kind of cool projects in Brussels, Turin, Santo Domingo, and Hong Kong. 3:58 And recently, Visa has expanded its partnerships with Cubic Transportation Systems, and Cubic is c- actually an integrator of intelligence travel solutions. 4:09 And what's interesting is these two companies have launched an open payment solutions in cities like London, Miami, New York, Sydney, and Vancouver. 4:20 And this just makes the point that cities all across the globe are turning to touchless technologies. So if you think about it, these cities want to make their cities connected and safe amid what? The COVID-19 pandemic. 4:38 So I want to mention another interesting example because I think this is making really good cases for you as we talk about it right now. 4:45 The city of West Hollywood has activated touchless green light modes for pedestrians. At crosswalks and intersections, walkers can take advantage of a non-touch walking. So this is pretty cool, right? 5:00 Pedestrians do not have to touch any surfaces to trigger signals. You know how you, when you go up, and you always have to touch that thing, and you wait, and you go, "Does this ever really work?" 5:09 Well, now we're seeing that these tech companies are kind of doing these really cool things, but they're also stepping up in a lot of different ways, so I think this is really neat. Now, here's another example. 5:20 BusUp recently integrated with LISNR, an ultrasonic contactless solution for ticketing for its customers. So the technology enables what it calls contactless person present authentication. 5:35 So this means that the technology uses proximity verification. So basically, if you are present, you're verified. Oh, I like that. So here's what I like about this partnership. 5:48 The technology works without an internet connection, which is pretty impressive since BusUp is a global company that offers services in areas with less than stable connectivity.While we're on the topic of tech, I wanna take a moment to define what all of us are thinking about touchless and contactless. 6:09 Basically, we're really kind of talking about the same thing. I mean, so when you're thinking about are they, I think one's used in one place over the other, but they're basically the same. 6:17 We also need to talk about the biggest hurdle that still exists in all of this: security. Just because there's a pandemic doesn't mean our need for security in this area disappears. 6:30 We need to be more vigilant now more than ever. In June, TransUnion found the perception of risky worldwide transactions in the financial services industry increased by 11% since March, when the pandemic was at its peak. 6:47 Now, we're talking about any activity that has been denied or reviewed due to fraud. The bad guys are out there, right? 6:55 They aren't going away, and they're looking right at all of your money, right at my money, your money, everybody's money, and they're trying to get into our digital wallets, and they have a lot of reasons to do that, and there's a lot of uptick in fraud, and the numbers say they don't include just to move into contactless payments. 7:16 They're trying to get into everything. 7:18 So, example, banks and lenders are having to deal with their workforce migrating to remote work conditions, which increases, or the attempts to try to get into our digital wallets or working away from home. 7:33 So there's a lot of reasons everybody's gotta really focus on security, which opens the door for the bad guys to break into and trying to find ways to figure out how to do the bad things, you know, to be those nefarious characters that wanna be the bad guys to do the bad things. 7:50 But either way, this is a discussion that we need to be having. But let's give some credit to what the Secure Technology Alliance is doing. 8:01 It is focusing on resources for education and implementation of COVID-19-era secure technologies. So this includes things like contactless payments and mobile identity solutions. 8:13 So it recently developed a white paper that focuses on a subset of wearables and payment processes, and I think this white paper, that might be worth a read if you want to figure out how to keep payments secure in wearable devices. 8:26 So if you've got time, check it out. So I think any time we can do anything to avoid being attacked, it's worthwhile. 8:34 So Visa is also taking steps to ease everyone's mind when it comes to contactless payments, saying that contactless cards use the same secure technology as an EMV chip. 8:47 You know, as everybody knows, that's the global standard for credit cards, and contactless payments are protected by the same technology as other Visa transactions. 8:56 But here is one last interesting statistic that I want to leave you with as we start to wrap up here from Visa. Contactless cards are moving among the lowest fraud rates of any type of payment. 9:10 In fact, the global contactless fraud rate declined 33% between 2017 and 2018. 9:17 So Visa argues that if fraudsters were trying to get close enough to read a contactless card, they would not gain access to the cardholder's name or the three-digit security code, which I think is really great. 9:31 So this helps prevent counterfeit and e-commerce fraud. 9:36 Now, certainly Visa has a stake in the game and a reason for wanting us all to believe contactless has low fraud rates, but it makes a few good points here, so I think that's what I like about it. 9:49 So okay, we're running out of time, so here's my opinion for today. We are moving to contactless payments at a faster rate than ever before, and let's face it, there's no turning back. 10:01 Smart cities need to be moving to this technology right now, and there's no more waiting around, wondering what we're gonna do. Our transactions need to be contactless. And what has to happen? 10:14 Our cities need to be touchless. It's time to make that move, and we need to be thinking about it, because you know what? As citizens, we need to know that we're safe. 10:26 We need to know that our city managers are making sure that we're safe, that our cities are safe. And you know what? Amid this pandemic, we're all a little bit nervous, but you know what? It's getting better. 10:38 But you know what? We're still a little nervous about it, and we all understand that, but there are some great technology. 10:43 Companies are doing some great things, and all of you out there who are tech companies, you're doing great things. But you know what? We're all humans first, and that fear first comes and overwhelms us. 10:55 But you know what? We gotta remember we're tech companies first. We understand the technology, and that's what we have to think about. 11:02 So here's my tip for today: no matter what business you are in, consider the impact of touchless technology. It could be payments. It could be something like no-touch crosswalk example that I gave earlier. 11:17 You need to be asking yourself, "How will touchless transform your business?" Because it's an interesting point. 11:26 You know, when we even think about when we talk to Siri or we talk to whatever, you know, and we use AI, how can you take advantage of it today? How can you work with it to bring it to market? 11:38 How are you and those partners that you have, or how are the future partners you want to be working with? These are the questions we need to be asking ourselves right now. 11:49 Mark my word, pretty soon we are all going to be living in a touchless world. 11:54 The time to prepare is right now, not in the future, right now, because we need to be thinking about how voice and touchless is going to change our life, how we're gonna be doing things in logistics, manufacturing, construction, how we're gonna be ordering things. 12:13 Because the fact remains we have to be living in a safer, cleaner, more secure society, and those are the things we all have to be thinking about. 12:23 So each day when we look and we think about the solutions, all of us, we might not be able to create it ourselves. You might not be able to create it yourself. 12:32 But together with another tech provider, you can create an awesome solution that keeps the nefarious bad guy away, right? We know the nefarious characters out there. Keep that bad guy away. 12:46 But together, we build this ecosystem that makes it better, stronger for all of us, and that's what we have to think about. 12:54 Yeah, bad things happen, but even better things happen when we work together as a society, and that's what I get excited about. I know right now this has been a really sucky year, but it's going to be a better one. 13:06 And you know what? I'm pretty excited. The holidays are coming. And you know what? For me, the holidays start in a few weeks. That's the way I look at it. You know, once October comes, it's holiday season! 13:16 So I have to start pumping up for it. So all right. We are out of time. But as I always say, we have to start thinking about what's next. 13:24 And now what I want you to do about what's next is I want you to tweet at me at ConnectedWMag. I want you to tell me what you think, because when we engage on social media, that's the most important thing. 13:34 I want you to check out our website at connectedworld.com or the show site at peggysmedleyshow.com. But I want you to come back. We're gonna take a quick commercial break, and we've got some great guests as always. 13:45 All right. This is The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and digital transformation. And remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. We'll be right back after this commercial break. 13:56 [upbeat music]
