Forgot Your Wallet? At This Downtown Shop You Can Pay With Your Smart Phone

Next time you crave a cone and don't have any cash, all you have to do at the Mission Hill Creamery is hold up your phone in front of a scanner and the bill is paid.

It's a good look at the future long predicted and only a small step away from the days when you will pay with your fingerprint or retina scans or a surgically-implanted microchip.

But, as the sign at the ice cream store says: when you see how easy this is, "your head will explode."

"It's so convenient," said owner Dave Kumec, who was looking for the latest technology for his two-month-old location at 1011 B Pacific Ave. "I haven't seen it any place else, but I expect to."

The scanner and phone app are made by Boston's LevelUp, a company that claims its phone service is safer than using a credit card. It explains how the service works here, but basically, you give it a credit card and the phone acts as a card.

But there's a good catch: the company is helping to ease people into its product with free offers. It gives as much as $5 to the phone account to spend in each new store.

The company looks like it's on the right track: it's hiring.

And you have to love its sense of humor. On the website page that explains where its capital comes from, it lists Google Ventures as an investor.

"Google is... well... if you're really not sure who they are, just Bing them," it says.