In 1989, when the credits rolled on “Back to the Future Part II,” I was disappointed – I didn’t want the movie to end. It imagined what the year 2015 would be like, including people zipping around on hoverboards and cruising in flying cars, and I wondered when I would see the amazing future promised in the movie again.
But fast forward to the actual day “Back to the Future” hero Marty McFly travels to the future – Oct. 21, 2015 to be exact – and we’re seeing some of the movie’s ideas play out in real life, especially when it comes to the world of mobile payments.
For example, think back to when Marty first arrives in the film version of 2015: A man named Terry asks him to donate money to the Hill Valley Preservation Society to save the local clock tower on what appears to be a modern-day tablet. We don’t see the interface she’s using, yet I can’t help but think that something like our
One Touch™, which simplifies how we pay for things, would have made it easy to donate. Later in the film, we see Marty’s nemesis, Biff Tannen, pay for his taxi ride with his thumbprint moments before stealing the time-traveling DeLorean. It echoes
TouchID, which lets you use your fingerprint to send money via the PayPal mobile app (Of course, the Biff of the present 2015 might have arrived in an Uber rather than a yellow cab and he wouldn’t have had to get a paper receipt for the ride as he does in the movie – just have it sent by email!).
Much to my dismay as a big “Back to the Future” fan, there’s no next installment in the series looking 30 years ahead. But if we were to make a movie about life in 2045, I’m guessing things will have changed dramatically. Perhaps we won’t even carry cash or a wallet anymore.
At PayPal, we’re always looking to the future and are working on the next ways people will send and receive money. As they say in Back to the Future, “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.” Now, where’s my hoverboard?