What is my fridge buying right now?

As usual, Money20/20 Europe brings its lineup of celebrities to share their views on the payments, Fintech, and financial services industry.

Charlotte Hogg, Visa CEO Europe, developed her thoughts about invisible payments. After years of evolutions in payments that led Visa to try and become always more visible and to impose its brand at some point in the payment process, the payment scheme is now advocating invisible payments: situations in which the payer is not even made conscious of paying at the time the payment occurs.

Under the term “invisible payments,” Visa puts both payments made by humans without any concrete payment action: think of Uber or payment at hotels, and payment by things we own or that are under our control. For instance, our cars or our fridges are bound to be more and more involved in payment processes. Visa says its goal is to ensure we remain in control of payments made by our things, and GDPR and Open Banking regulations will at the same time open up the payment ecosystem and reinforce consumer control on financial transactions.

Invisible payments by objects raise new series of questions. While I am away from home, is my fridge currently ordering stuff? From whom? And for which purpose? How are its payments completed? Is my fridge having a deal with my toaster? And what will have happened to my bank account when my fridge will have siphoned it out?

As we anticipate IoT payments to be taking a larger place in the payment ecosystem, who is currently working on these projects, working on their standardization and working on ensuring humans remain in control?