Visa says we're all going to have internet-connected fridges in the future

Soon we're all going to be buying things with our fridge. That's what Jonathan Vaux from Visa says, at least.

We met with Vaux, an executive director at Visa Europe during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

"Your fridge will have a payment capability," he said. "People are immediately associating [Samsung Pay] with the phone, but they're the biggest provider of white goods and so I will have a fridge, I'm sure, that will have connected payments in it."

We asked Vaux whether having an internet-connected fridge in your kitchen, integrated with your bank account, is a security risk. "It depends what it's sharing on the internet," he said. "If I'm buying stuff through my fridge, it's probably going to be milk ... If I suddenly start to order a MacBook Air from my fridge then your fraud detection systems are probably going to start setting off some alarms."

People have been talking about "connected fridges" for years. In fact, it's a running joke amongst attendees at tech conferences. A Tumblr blog, F*ck Yeah Internet Fridge, collects photos and mentions of connected fridges.

In fact, here's a BBC News article from 1999 about internet-connected fridges:

You can actually buy a WiFi fridge already, if you really want to. Samsung sells an internet-connected fridge for $3,599. It says that it opens up "a world of interactive communication and entertainment."