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McKinsey & Company analyzed energy use by data centers and found that, on average, they were using only 6 percent to 12 percent of the electricity powering their servers to perform computations. The rest was essentially used to keep servers idling and ready in case of a surge in activity that could slow or crash their operations.

To guard against a power failure, they further rely on banks of generators that emit diesel exhaust.

Even running electricity at full throttle has not been enough to satisfy the industry. In addition to generators, most large data centers contain banks of huge, spinning flywheels or thousands of lead-acid batteries — many of them similar to automobile batteries

This is, I imagine, true. However, it's also complicated. I'm sure that what the Zapp guys are thinking is that NFC is much easier and more appealing for customers than QR codes, so the Zapp app will be indifferent: if the POS has an NFC interface then the customer can tap, if not they can scan (or use Bluetooth or whatever). The Samsung owners can smugly tap and go, the Apple owners can pfaff about scanning. Again, though, not that simple. The NFC interfaces on the existing terminals are used for EMV (ie, NFC card emulation mode), which is why they will need upgrading to do cool stuff with Zapp (hence the appeal to acquirers).

For the smart card technology to work, it must be backed up by fingerprint and eye-scanners in banks, shops, estate agents, hotels, and public services such as hospitals. To check your identity they in turn must have 24hr access to the National Identity Register (NIR). Every time the card is used, information about when, where, and how it was used is stored on the database in the form of an audit log.

The data includes passport and National Insurance numbers and bank details. They relate to people who had expressed an interest in, or joined, the Royal Navy, Royal Marines and the RAF.

Smart card transactions can be quicker, because the terminal and card communicate with each other -- the terminal verifying that the card is authentic and vice versa -- instead of the terminal having to communicate via Internet or wireless with the card issuer to verify that the card is real and hasn't been reported lost or stolen, says Randy Vanderhoof, executive director of the Smart Card Alliance, a nonprofit organization that works to promote the adoption of smart card technology.

Also, when a card leaves the cardholder's physical presence, it can be compromised, using a hand-held information-stealing device called a skimmer,

in which information is encoded into a magnetic stripe on the back of the card, and the newer so-called smart cards, which contain a computer chip that holds information.