It’s 2015. I was finally able to pay a vending machine using my phone.
It’s 2015. We haven’t got hoverboards, we still have to use our hands for video games, and we definitely don’t have flying cars. However, I was finally able to use my phone to pay a vending machine.
The thing of the digital vending machine is something that’s been talked about for a long time, but in my own experience, not really worked outside of Japan.
And even in Japan it hadn’t always been an easy thing. I’d remembered a talk from a few years ago by the great Bill Moggridge where he’d showed a video circa 2007 of one of his researchers in the Toyko office trying to use their phone to pay for a vending machine. It doesn’t go well: taking a grand total of 20 minutes to get a can of Coke in the freezing cold. Watch Moggridge’s Stanford talk from 11:45–15:00 to see how it all plays out.
He’d pointed out that it’s often the wider system around the actual payment that is the result of the complexity. Systems such as my Starbucks card are pretty locked down in terms of scope, and to date I don’t really know of anything that’s let me use Apple Pay or anything similar as of yet.
So, I was intrigued when I noticed on a Saturday afternoon that my university library here in the UK had a new vending machine that promised payment via phone.
The biggest breakthrough here: using Paypal. The UK is notoriously finicky about bank security (to the point that my Visa debit card gets frozen by my bank every time I pay for something on Gumroad) so being able to use a known name such as Paypal is a nice workaround. For all of the issues the tech community have with Paypal, it is coming to the point that it’s fair to expect people to have accounts. I’d hazard a guess that certainly most uni students to for the likes of eBay and Etsy. I know I did.
So, according to this system, there are three steps. Let’s do this.
First of all, let’s download the Paypal app.
TIME: +0 minutes
I’m a bit confused that there are two similarly named apps, but go for the official looking one since that’s what’s on the vending machine and it looks as if the other one is for vendors.
Done. Not a long download time either. Now to open it.
TIME: +1 minute
OK. That’s the first time I’ve seen someone have to accept T&Cs before we’ve even opened the app. That’s OK. I’ll continue.
Nice starter information. I know I have a Paypal account so I’ll just put the information in and I’ll be able to pay the vending machine, right?
Right, let’s get to that money. Now to remember my paypal password… it takes a couple of gos, but that’s OK.
TIME: +2 minutes
I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to do yet. All I know is that I have no money apparently in this account. I don’t think I’m transferring money, so maybe I need to go to Wallet?
(Also, holy crap I spend a lot on UX stuff. This is all UX stuff).
TIME: +3 minutes
I’m guessing that this is going to be like a Starbucks card where you have to use your Wallet with money in it to make purchases. So I need to add some money….
I’m a little confused as to why it’d take 5–7 days to transfer money, but hoping this won’t actually be the case here, since I want to buy something from the vending machine.
TIME: +4 minutes
I get a transfer notification. That’s good… but still says something about 5–7 days…
…as is confirmed by the email I get. Hmmm. Time to try something else.
Back on the app, I hit the Local button. And I get…
I need to get my mobile phone number verified. Oh, OK. Fair enough. At least the notification SMS is fast.
… oh, and I need to add a picture?
Wait, what? I have to add a picture first? I didn’t know that.
I quickly go through my photo reel for a semi-decent picture, even though I’m just doing this to use a vending machine.
TIME: +6 minutes
OK, this is taking a while. Maybe it’ll be faster now.
Now we’re getting somewhere. I find a list of people accepting Paypal. The vending machine looks like a good bet, especially since it says “order”.
This is looking good. P8K was what was on the vending machine.
I’m ordering! I wonder what happens next?
Having finally got to this screen, I’m a bit surprised that it just shows options for paying. Then I realise, oh, that random screen on the vending machine must actually be a touch screen. (Also, that’s the weirdest way I’ve ever seen £s shown. This does look as if it’s optimised for the European market).
TIME: +8 minutes
Back to the vending machine. I realise that you only find out the price of things in there once you’ve tapped them in (fair enough). My bottle of water will set me back £1.00. Back to the app to select that…
TIME: +9 minutes
Ooh! Exciting!
And the money is there! But not the thing I’d selected. I have to select it again. Let’s have another go at that…
Vending…
TIME: +10 minutes
…and success! Boy did we work for this bottle of water.
And, because it’s Paypal, an immediate receipt of who and what I’ve paid.
Kinda simple, secure, sorted in the end
Clocking in at 10 minutes from start to vend, I have to admit that this wasn’t quite as fast as I’d have liked (if half the time of the Toyko vending machine). Bill Moggridge’s point on complexity in systems still stands. I’m not quite sure if the system is really “simple, secure, sorted”—though I do now find it interesting that they’ve made no mention of speed. However, I was prepared to sit through this one to sort it out, namely because:
- There was no real option for me. Even though it would have been quicker for me to go get cash from an ATM I knew was near the library, given it was a Saturday afternoon, it would still have required breaking the money somehow. (Though come to think of it, there may have been a serviced food stand in the library basement. Hmm.).
[UPDATE: Yngvar/@uxmarksthespot pointed out on twitter that if you have a contactless card you could use this. When I was in NZ last year I got to try out contactless (or as we call it over there ‘wave and pay’) over there with my ASB bank card. Yes, it was like magic. Unfortunately my HSBC Visa Debit doesn’t have this. Irritatingly, my HSBC card was issued a year after my NZ ASB one. Hmm.] - I was in a reasonable environment: unlike the poor IDEO researcher in sub-zero temperatures shivering away, I was in a warm library and curious enough to try it out.
- The system never felt entirely broken, even if I did get frustrated.
That said, I’d suggest that Paypal may want to add a few tweaks to their app, namely:
- Changing their home screen to be more action focused
- Having some form of very quick walkthrough for things like using local
- Keeping an eye on localisation (though this may be the fault of the vending machine company not inputting the information correctly).
’You mean you have to use your credit card’?
I remember being incredibly excited the first time I could use the Starbucks app to pay for something, and being able to use a mobile boarding pass. These are de rigeur now, so it could be that I’ll quickly get used to being able to use something like the Paypal app to pay. Certainly though, it’s nice to feel that some things are changing in that year of the future, 2015.
