After 11 years, the wireless payment technology known as Octopus has become a huge hit in Hong Kong. More than 10 million transactions per day are conducted using the Octopus smart card, with a total value exceeding $10.8 million. Over 1,000 vendors accept payment via Octopus, including grocers, fast food outlets, and the local bus system. Octopus uses FeliCa near-field communications (NFC) technology from Sony, which allows consumers to pay by simply holding their card close to an electronic reader. Even more interesting, the transponder can also be embedded in a variety of items, including watches, key chains, and stuffed animals. By tracking personal data, the system can also, for example, automatically offer senior citizen discounts when users reach a certain age. The success of Octopus has been so great that the transportation companies which created it set up a separate business for it. Octopus Holdings Ltd. established a full-time consulting office in the Netherlands, and it has a division dedicated to consumer research services--no big surprise, given the database generated by 10 million daily transactions. While the reviewer's skepticism was not undone by the support of Sony and NXP for the Octopus smart card, seeing it in practice 'made a believer out of (him).' The magnetic stripe infrastructure of the U.S. is not in immediate danger, but elsewhere in this world, the sight of people waving watches and teddy bears in order to buy things will be increasingly the norm.