Visa Is Testing Sunglasses You Can Use To Pay For Stuff

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The future of payment technology is so bright you might have to wear shades—literally.

Visa recently unveiled a pair of sunglasses at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, that will pay for your stuff—no credit card swiping required.

The pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses Visa showed off at the popular music and technology conference contain a tiny chip on the side.

To use them to pay for things, all you have to do is take the glasses off your head and tap them on a Visa near field communication enabled terminal (this is the same technology that lets you use your phone  with Apple Pay).

Ray-Ban

The next time you hit the beach, you may not have to worry about carrying your wallet or your purse. Just grab your keys and your sunglasses.

“It ties back to our tagline of everywhere you want to be,” Chris Curtain, chief brand and innovation marketing officer at Visa, told CNBC. “Without it, it’s hard for us to fulfill our tagline. Our view is we take form factors that you don’t expect to be payment-enabled like sunglasses or maybe like a ring and expose to the market that maybe it can be.”

The company simultaneously unveiled the sunglasses at the Quiksilver Pro and Roxy Pro surf competitions in Australia. Visa wants to see if brands or banks would be willing to sponsor their new product.

Getty Images | Justin Sullivan

There’s no word yet on when (or if) the sunglasses will be available to the public, or how much they’ll cost. Plus, some people have already pointed out that sunglasses are easy to lose—what happens to your payment information then?

Don’t worry—if payment-enabled sunglasses aren’t your thing, there’s no risk that your good ol’ Visa credit card will be going away anytime soon.

“We want to let all flowers bloom and see what the market decides from all the ways to pay,” Sam Shrauger, Visa’s senior vice president of digital solutions, told Mashable.

About the Author

Sarah Kuta

Sarah Kuta is an award-winning writer and editor based in Colorado. She writes regularly about how to find deals, save money and find side gigs. Reach her at sarah@dontwasteyourmoney.com. More.

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