To RFinity And Beyond!

This is where I work. RFinity! A tech start-up based in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

The History:


Idaho National Labs (INL) was working on a way to secure cell phones from being hacked. They came up with a wicked, awesome encryption process. At around the same time, Credit Card Fraud was up and many people were having their identity stolen. Then the bright idea came... Hey, let's use this on payment processes! Thus RFinity was born, using their super encryption process to save the people of Townsville... Oops, I went all Powerpuff Girls on y'all. So they decided to use Rexburg, Idaho and the students at BYU-Idaho as guinea pigs.

What Do They Do:

Rfinity is an emerging technology for which people can pay with an RFID sticker. Much like those weird stickers you find in expensive items at stores that when you try to take them off they spiral away with some wire ribbon. That thing! Well there's a random combination of characters (not cartoon characters... I've checked) stored on the RFID sticker and is only activated by a reader machine. But the numbers don't mean anything to the reader, nor do they to anyone. That code gets sent to the RFinity server faster than a sneeze and gets encrypted and read and *poof* Magic stuff happens and it becomes a secure transaction... Way more secure than a Credit/Debit Card. So we make it possible for people to have these stickers and connect them with cool merchants to buy things from.

Why On A Phone:


People keep asking me, why do I put the sticker on my phone? It's ugly and I don't want it coming off. True the sticker is fairly ugly. No one wants to have a dark blue and orange thing on the back of their phone no more than they want to wear those old 3D glasses all the time. Especially when their phone is either white, silver or black... Or heaven forbid a person have a red, yellow, or green phone. :P So why put it on the phone? Well the future is here folks, but not quite. iPhone is looking into following Google's phones and having the RFID technology built into their phones. So soon you won't even need a sticker. But until then, get used to swiping your phone over a reader and be done with your transaction. Most phones on the market have a plastic back to them. You can, sometimes, easily place the sticker under the back case or if you're smart enough to have a protective shell for your phone, stick it under there... Underwear? Yup! Plus people carry their phone with them even if they don't bring their purse/wallet. If you lose your phone, not a problem. No one could access your account by reading the sticker. They still need to know your pin (which can be 4-20 digits long... no one ever guesses a pin that more than 4 digits) in order to do a transaction.

Why Do I Want It:

Best question yet! Not only is it the "Way of the Future" as Leonardo DiCaprio so repetitively put in Aviator, it's faster and more secure than credit/debit cards where your information is stored completely on the magnetic strip. Plus right now with it being in "pilot" testing phase (excuse the pun), we have set up some amazing deals for the Rexburg area. We are working with the following merchants in the area and hope to have more.

Plus Fatcats and All 3 Subways

New Things:


For a long time we were working with the student iCard accounts, then we brought on a local bank to do other types of transactions in the community. But now... Drum roll please... we can connect to PayPal. That's right, PayPal, which you can attach to any bank you're currently banking with and track it on your budgeting software like I know you religiously do. ;)

There's more coming through the pipeline... Keep posted on Facebook and Twitter for when they come out. Also for more light reading go to The RFinity Website.

Wait! What Do You Do:


I'm tech support. In a nutshell, I answer the phone, help users with simple problems (which we don't experience much) and anything they want me to do... test hardware, software, merchant - customer interaction, create graphics, reports, and brain storm marketing ideas.

There you have it. What I do for a living right now.

What would you like to know about RFinity, or what would you like to see done in the future?