The aptly named product is designed to be worn by women as a form of self defense mechanism.
Yasmine Mustafa has designed a new form of wearable technology that can be worn by women who want to feel self assured and empowered everywhere they go, in the way that the designer feels when she hears the song called “Roar” by Katy Perry.
That’s why she gave her mobile gadget the same name as the hit song.
The purpose of this wearable technology is to help to keep women safe from assault and is the latest invention that Mustafa has created. She is one member of a team of five that is currently working on a version of the small mobile device that works as a flashing light and a high pitched alarm that can work to attract attention to someone who is being attacked, while distracting, disorienting, and hopefully scaring off the attacker.
The Roar wearable technology is a small and lightweight module that is about the size of a quarter.
The design of these wearables makes it easy for a woman to attach it to nearly anything, from clothing to shoes, from handbags to jewelry, or even to a smartphone. Mustafa explained that “The alarm and flashing light will startle the attacker, providing the victim with an opportunity to escape.”
In order to use this mobile device, the wearer simply needs to press a button and the light and sound functions will begin. Moreover, a text message with a link to the location of the wearer is also automatically sent to the people who have been pre-programmed into her contact list. Mustafa added that the device can also activate a call to 911 emergency services.
Mustafa is the head of the Philadelphia chapter of the Girl Develop It program. She was inspired with the idea after having gone on a trip on her own for half a year to South America. While she was there, she said that she had come across an “overwhelming number of women who had been assaulted.” Once she returned to her own home town, there were reports that there was a young woman who was raped in her own neighborhood of Center City. She’d had enough and decided to use wearable technology to help woman to protect themselves against these attacks.
The credit card giant has now backed the smartphone payment solution that is accepted at most POS terminals.
It has now been announced that Visa is investing into LoopPay, which is a mobile wallet app that is designed to provide consumers and retailers with a mobile payment solution that is already accepted at a majority of point of sale terminals among retailers.
The LoopPay mobile app has been created to allow people to make mobile payments with smartphones.
This eliminates the need for those consumers to have to bring their plastic credit cards with them because they can use the mobile wallet within their device to pay with those cards in a digital manner, instead. The app uses a traditional setup for a smartphone based payments service, and provides the consumer with a small dongle that plugs into the device in order to allow users to be able to swipe their virtual cards when they reach the cash register to pay for their products at a retailer’s checkout counter.
In this way, the LoopPay mobile wallet doesn’t require any changes to be made to the retailer POS terminals.
To work with the LoopPay mobile payments software, retailers can simply continue to use the point of sale terminals that they already have. This helps to be able to span the gap that is currently present in the majority of smartphone based wallet services in the United States retail market.
Typically, in order for retailers to be able to receive mobile payments, they would have to change their terminals in order to accept some specific form of technology. At the same time, those that already accept certain types of smartphone friendly tech, such as NFC technology based readers, are compatible with only a small percentage of devices that are currently used by consumers.
As this service allows retailers to keep their systems and simply provides consumers with a dongle to use, this overcomes the compatibility challenges that have existed among many mobile wallet services until now. In this, Visa has already announced that it is upgrading its VisaCheckout program. Therefore, their investment into LoopPay will give the company the opportunity to make an even larger impact on the smartphone payments sector.
