Team BluePay is excited to be working with American Express on a new app that will transform the way customers complete purchases in stores. This app will allow AMEX card members to pay merchants without ever taking out their wallet.

Typical point of sale (POS) systems support mobile payments with services like Apple Pay, Android Pay, and Samsung Pay. These services work by using NFC, or near field communication. As the name implies, NFC only works over the short range of 4 centimeters, which is why a customer must bring their phone close to the POS terminal to complete a payment. 

We want to use BLE, or Bluetooth Low Energy, to make the payment process a touchless user experience. Since BLE ranges up to 100 meters, the user can complete the payment from their phone without tapping it on the POS terminal. Potentially, customers can complete transactions using the phone app from anywhere in store.

Our goal is to improve the customer’s experience by making the payment process completely touchless. In addition to focusing on the user experience, we are also emphasizing security, since we will be interacting with payment account information. So far, we’ve started learning about BLE technology and researching different POS systems. We are also thinking about how the payment transaction process will work from the user’s perspective.