OK, I see weird things everywhere. Last week in Japan ...
But even the Japanese cannot beat the guys in the Middle East. A few days before I went to Tokyo I was in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at a conference called MEFTECH, where one exhibitor proudly showed me the Beam app.
Beam is very popular in the UAE. It's accepted in over 2,000 stores in the country and has 270,000 Beamers earning instant rewards every time they shop with Beam Wallet. So far so good. But he then went on to talk about how much the ultra high net worth individuals in the country love their pets, with cats extremely popular as a status symbol, especially rare breed cats like the famous Laykoi Cat, otherwise known as the Werewolf Cat.
Knowing that cats are the coolest thing on the internet, popular in UAE and a recognised status symbol for the UHNW, Beam have therefore announcing the launch of CatPay.
I honestly thought the guy was joking at first until he showed me their website http://catpay.co/ and video.
Apparently they've already signed up 95,000 pre-registrations for this new payment method, that is safe and secure thanks to its inbuilt biometric authentication.
I wasn't sure about this idea at first but, as a cat lover myself, he allowed me to try out the service whilst in Abu Dhabi and it worked.
Quite simply brilliant.
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
