Gallery: A Concept Gadget Gives Digital Currency That Real Money Feel
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This Milano cookie-sized gadget is called Scrip. It's not real—it's a design concept from New Deal Design—but if it were, you would use it to buy things you'd normally pay for with cash.
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“Everybody hates cash—the system is trying to kill cash,” says Gadi Amit, president of New Deal Design, the Silicon Valley studio behind Scrip. “It always fails. But we still figured that there’s a need for something new, something connected to the digital world, but that is akin to cash.”
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To pay for things with Scrip, you visit a specially enabled ATM and load money onto it, like you would with a prepaid subway card. As you buy things, by syncing Scrip with NFC-enabled “cash register” machines.
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Scrip imitates cash's tangible benefits. It has small, raised squares and flashing LED digits on its surface.
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When it comes time to make a payment, the electromechanical pins that comprise Scrip’s surface leap to attention, generating patterns that denote the denominations you’ll use to ante up.
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On a psychological level, Scrip is also designed to feel like money. The designers say they'd ideally create it out of copper, and its etchings are reminiscent of the careful detail you'd find on a coin or banknote.
