Have you ever paid for something on the PlayStation Store and thought, hey, that wasn't easy enough? No? Me neither, but PlayStation wants to give you easier ways of transferring your card details over to the console, which I can sort of get behind. Today in strange PlayStation patent news, the PS5 controller, or its PS6 successor, might one day be able to take contactless payments from your phone or bank card.
As is always the case when I report on new PlayStation patents, I'll tell you to take this with a pinch of salt. This brand files some utterly bizarre patents just to say it has ownership over the ideas, and many of them never see the light of day.
Regardless, originally found by Patentlyze, the patent can also be found on public listings under the application number 19082121 and is titled "VIDEO GAME CONTROLLER-DRIVEN INFORMATION TRANSFER". It essentially lays out that Sony has put ownership on the idea of a video game controller being able to detect through NFC protocol that a phone or payment method is nearby, transferring their details to a console.
Near Field Communication (NFC) is the same technology that's used for all sorts of payment methods today, including contactless bank card payments, but also Nintendo's Amiibos. Most phones today also have NFC features in them, so you can pay contactless through a bank app.
While this seems like a pretty arbitrary feature, it seems like Sony is mainly eyeing it up for the added convenience of being able to transfer your payment details to a console without typing out your card number, expiry date, and security code using the controller and on-screen keyboard.
"Video game players have found it desirable to store payment method information and account information such as credit account information, bank account information, gift card information... and associated credentials in their accounts for facilitating and managing video game purchases," reads the patent's description.
Interestingly though, instead of listing player convenience reasons, Sony's patent argues the best reasons for implementing a new way of transferring these payment details are more to prevent the console itself from overworking itself:
"However, facilitating and coordinating these operations by performing multiple operational steps using multiple devices often causes performance of the video game console to suffer and/or one or more operations of the video game console to fail."
"Techniques disclosed herein improve video game consoles and video game console performance by utilizing video game controller-driven information transfer operations," it continues.
Surprisingly, the patent makes no mention of actual bank cards, only "electronic devices," which allude to a phone - one image does show a gift card being transferred, however, which might suggest your bank card will work too.
"In some implementations, the video game controller can detect that the electronic device is within the predetermined distance from the video game controller by, in some examples, detecting a signal emitted from the electronic device, using a communication protocol such as a Near Field Communication (NFC) protocol and/or a Bluetooth protocol, detecting that the electronic device has physically contacted the video game controller."
The controller would then vibrate to tell you the details had been detected.
The patent itself shows illustrations of what looks like a DualSense controller, but personally, I think this feature, if we ever see it used, will likely be reserved for the PlayStation 6 and its controller, because introducing this now to the current iteration of the DualSense would probably cause price changes and manufacturing difficulties this far into the controller's life.
While the DualSense uses Bluetooth, it doesn't currently have NFC protocols within it, so it could require a change of architecture to implement.
Another intriguing use of this feature would be to log guests into your PlayStation console when playing a local multiplayer game while they're visiting. This could save the hassle of having to do manual logins to non-home consoles and might just allow you to tap your PlayStation app on a controller to log in. Another illustration shows your phone tapping the controller as a way to send and receive messages, but I don't see such a clear use for this.
What's also interesting to me is that while Sony is patenting this idea with specific reference to transferring payment information, Nintendo has had an NFC communicator in its Pro Controller since the original Nintendo Switch in 2017 to scan amiibos with. I bet someone at Nintendo is kicking themselves that they didn't think of this use for their controllers' NFC protocols.
For more, look at the best PC controllers, the best Xbox Series X controllers, and the best Switch 2 controllers.
