We have known and heard about hands-free payments for a while now thanks to Bluetooth enabled technologies. The solution is as easy as it is futuristic; customer completes the shopping and pays via the mobile app at the cash register by just saying so, without ever tapping a button.

Hands-free Payment is currently being provided by Blesh and fastPay and was announced last year at the Bluetooth World Summit.  Our approach to the solution was to integrate the beacon technology to fastPay, the pioneer mobile payment platform in Turkey, and to enable communicating with the app’s users by sending push notifications about custom offers when they are at a specific location. Having completed their shopping, the user walks up to the register only to learn that thanks to fastPay, their payment can be received at their request without a physical transaction. The video below depicts the story well.

PayPal and Square also have similar solutions with PayPal using its own PayPal Beacon, which will be available soon.

Last week, Google announced its long-awaited approach to hands-free payments. Though the details are still not announced, the story and the structure seem to be quite similar. After downloading an app, all the customer has to do is to say their name to the cashier. Google makes sure the method is secure ensuring that no credit card information is being shared with the stores. Once the transaction is completed, customers will receive a notification.

Reports say that McDonald’s and pizza chain Papa John’s have partnered with Google to experiment with the technology in the Bay Area.

For more information on Google’s “Hands Free Payment”, click here.