Fridges of the Future: One-Touch Grocery Shopping
Homes just keep getting smarter. You can setup home automation systems to control your thermostat, blinds, outlets, lights, and almost anything else in your home all from the use of a tablet or mobile device. Now, Visa is predicting smarter refrigerators that will let you order groceries from a panel on the front door. That means you won’t even have to go to the grocery store.
An executive director from Visa told Business Insider, “Your Fridge will have a payment capability. People are immediately associating [Samsung Pay] with the phone, but they’re the biggest provider of white goods and so I will have a fridge, I’m sure, that will have connected payments in it.” Visa is the obvious partner to choose for this venture.
The idea of smart refrigerators isn’t too far off. After all, lots of devices at home can already connect to the Internet, such as TVs, treadmills, alarm clocks, and gaming devices. The only problem with smart refrigerators is figuring out the logistics of who is going to deliver the groceries to your door. Lots of grocery store chains will probably compete to be the first to fulfill those orders. However, it’s likely that customers will have several options in the long run.
You can already buy a WiFi fridge — Samsung has a model that costs $3,599 and so does LG. However, they have more of an entertainment value than anything else. You can’t order groceries from the panel. What you can do is use your phone to adjust the temperature settings on your fridge and track the items you have inside. This is helpful when creating shopping lists when you do go to the grocery store. The technology is there, so one-touch grocery shopping from a refrigerator could pop up soon.
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