We all get another step closer to the utopia that is just having 1 device to do everything for us. The Cimbal payment app might just see the death of the wallet, and even the humble magnetic stripe driven card.

The new technology out by Cimbal allows your smartphone to turn into a payment portal device.
It sounds complicated, but really it is not. With no card readers or other hardware like scanners needed by retailers, this looks very much like the way forward, and the best thing is that all of this is free. Just like sharing information via bluetooth all of this works instantly and efficiently

All you need is your phone, the Cimbal App and presumably a Cimbal account and you are ready to go. With more and more of these apps becoming available (like the new Paypal Mobile Checkout Express option) and users generally becoming more accepting of such technology with retailers even starting to embrace it, it is just a metter of time before this becomes a viable mainstream option.

The thing to be aware of now though is phone security. It was said on a morning news programme here this morning that something horrendous like 60% of New Zealand users dont utilise any security features on their phones. Lose it and all of your stuff is open for the world to see - and steal and use. With smartphones becoming more the norm than not, the potential for identity theft is ever more present - an unprotected smartphone will have access to email, contacts, social media space like facebook and trademe, not to mention the storage of documents and media files.

The rise of the smartphone is more about the embracing of personal computers to achieve more of our daily tasks whilst on the move. Email, internet, baking, and now direct payment options. Cool!

Watch the clip and hit the read more to see more - I have loaded some more clips about this technology. Amazing, but a little scary...

Before I am ready to go I will need to get another smartphone. Probably one that is a bit more robust. Do they make these? I couldn't go through the headache of breaking another screen again (see initial photo...)

And I certainly dont want the world to be reminded every time I communicate that the message was sent by my iphone or my ipad. Does anyone other than Apple care about this wankery?

So maybe it is time to go smartphone shopping. I hear from a reliable source that the Windows Phone 7 will be one to settle all of the discontent brought about by the iphone 4. Might be getting me one of those....