Paying with a credit card is so 2012. Welcome to 2013, where you can pay with your face!

You don't need your wallet if you shop at certain stores testing a new PayPal app that's prompting buzz. You instead can pay with your face and your phone.

Basically, it works this way: You download the PayPal app, which shows a list of participating stores. Upon entering a store, just check in on your phone by using a four-digit PIN. Done shopping? A clerk will see your photo and first name on his or her phone or tablet and click on your picture to charge your PayPal account.

"We very much see this as the future of money. By 2016, you'll be able to leave your wallet at home," Rob Harper, PayPal's London-based head of retail services, told The Telegraph in a video report. It's backed by the same security that PayPal has for online purchases, Harper told the BBC, so if the company thinks something looks suspicious, it will take steps.

It's getting buzz for being tested at a dozen merchants on the outskirts of London, such as Noble Jones fashion clothing store, where owner George Absi finds the system "quite useful. You can make payment anywhere in the store. You don't have to bring the customer the bill," he said in a promotional video.

A UK-based PayPal spokesperson told MSN News "it is already available in the US," but we're unclear where, so we're trying to get details. (From what we can tell so far, it looks like a different PayPal mobile-payment system in the U.S. is offered at two dozen chains and typically works as it does at The Home Depot — you pay with PayPal at the cash register by typing in a mobile number and PIN or by swiping a PayPal payment card and entering a PIN, according to PayPal's website.)

Could this cashless, credit-cardless advancement tested in Britain one day improve your life? Depends on how much hassle you consider cash and credit cards to be. Ubergizmo puts it in a snarky way:

"If you’re lucky enough to have your popular retailer accept PayPal while you’re checking out in the store, then you know what a slight hassle it can be to have to input your password or passcode, which can add seconds to your entire transaction, and as a result, can turn your life completely upside down. That’s why PayPal is testing out a new method of verifying its users by using a photo of them as verification."

Source: MSN

How does it feel to be the richest man alive, for one whole minute?

When Chris Reynolds opened his June PayPal e-mail statement, something was off.

The Pennsylvania PR executive's account balance had swelled to a whopping $92,233,720,368,547,800.

 

That's $92 QUADRILLION (and change).

 

Money that would make Reynolds -- who also sells auto parts on eBay in his spare time -- the richest man in the world by a long shot.

 

Rich, as in more than a million times richer than Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim. And he's worth $67 billion.

 

Oh, if only.

 

"It's a curious thing. I don't know, maybe someone was having fun," Reynolds said.

 

So he logged online, and reality bit back. His account balance read $0. The correct amount.

PayPal admitted the error and offered to donate an unspecified amount of money to a cause of Reynolds' choice.

 

"This is obviously an error and we appreciate that Mr. Reynolds understood this was the case," PayPal said in a statement.

 

Before this incident, the most Reynolds ever made on PayPal was "a little over $1,000" selling a set of vintage BMW tires on eBay.

 

So what would the would-be quadrillionaire have done with all that cash? "I probably would have paid down the national debt," he said.

 

Source: CNN