2015年五大科技趋势

    移动钱包前路漫漫

    一些公司正在试图改变人们在商店收银台前的付款方式，他们会不可避免地夸大现金和信用卡的不便之处。事实上，如果时常掏出钱包就是你生活中最大的麻烦，那你可真是幸运。不过我们仍然可以期待移动支付在今年有所进展。这项技术的核心思想就是用设备中的瑞士军刀——智能手机——来取代信用卡和现金。在商店终端前摇一摇手机，你的借记卡或信用卡账户就会支付消费金额。去年大张旗鼓问世的苹果支付，只是争夺用户的众多同类服务中的一种。贝宝、Visa的PayWave和万事达卡的PayPass之前的尝试，在很大程度上都未能吸引用户。研究公司Jackdaw Research的分析师简•道森认为，该技术在2014年的早期采用者中表现惊艳，应该可以在今年实现更大发展——尤其是在美国以外。但他也表示，移动支付仍需一定时间才会被广泛使用。道森说：“这是一项慢热的技术，它不会在明年就颠覆世界。”

    Show me the (mobile) money

    Companies trying to revolutionize how people pay at store cash registers inevitably describe using cash and credit cards as a huge inconvenience. Reality check: if occasionally having to pull out your wallet is among your biggest problems, then you're lucky. Still, look for mobile payments to make some gains this year. The general idea is replace credit cards and cash with smartphones, the Swiss Army knife of devices. Wave your phone in front of a store terminal and, presto, your purchase is billed to your bank or credit card account. Apple Pay, introduced last year to great fanfare, is just one of the many services jostling for users. Previous efforts by PayPal, Visa's PayWave, and MasterCard'sPayPass largely failed to catch on. Jan Dawson, an analyst with Jackdaw Research, expects the technology to gain more traction this year—particularly overseas—after a strong showing among early adopters in 2014. But he warned that widespread adoption is still sometime off in future. "It’s a slow burn technology," he says. "It's not going to take the world by storm next year."