With a little help from the latest Bluetooth beacon technology, you can now pay for stuff using your beer bottle.
Paying for stuff using a beer bottle might seem a weird idea. But it soon could become part of your night-in ritual if this Russian invention takes off.
App developer Aleksandr Semenov, CEO of Heads and Hands noticed how a Grolsch campaign allowed its customers to access movies by enter promotional codes printed on its bottles into its partners' websites.
But he felt they could go one better. The process was just too fiddly. Why couldn't the customer unlock the movie with just a single tap?
You just swipe the bottle top against your device to conduct a transaction
They went on to achieve just that, making clever use of Bluetooth beacon technlogy to create a special bottle. When swiped, it transmits a signal from the beacon located under the bottle top to the appliance you wish to watch the movie on - facilitating the transaction in a single step.
"You'll never need a credit card to pay for a movie again," says Semenov. "It’s so amazingly simple, I still can’t believe I’ve done it. Who knows, maybe we’ll target the pizza market next with this technology!"
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Tom May is an award-winning journalist and author specialising in design, photography and technology. His latest book, The 50th Greatest Designers, was released in June 2025. He's also author of the Amazon #1 bestseller Great TED Talks: Creativity, published by Pavilion Books, Tom was previously editor of Professional Photography magazine, associate editor at Creative Bloq, and deputy editor at net magazine.
