Little life hacks # 1

Our life is changing rapidly. And technology, services and mobile apps are making a big contribution to this change. Recently, performing any action using technology, I began to think about how we used to live without all this. One saves time, the other saves energy and money, and the third is a real technological magic that we could not even imagine a few years ago.

And I got the idea to periodically share such useful things with you. And, most importantly, talk about the experience of using them.

Let's get started!

Content

1. 'Yandex.Fueling' – refuel without leaving the car
2. 'Kinohod' – all cinemas in one application
3. ATMs of 'Tinkoff Bank' – a card is no longer needed, a smartphone is enough (even without NFC)
4. Stocard – (almost) all bonus cards in the phone
5. Russian Railways app – it's enough to enter passport data every time
6. Conclusion

'Yandex.Fueling' – refuel without leaving the car

If you have been driving for several years and at the same time love technology, then you have probably at least once thought about why you cannot refuel a car without going to the cashier of a gas station or without leaving the car at all. The reason for these thoughts could be frosty or rainy weather, fatigue or banal laziness. In the fall of 2017, Yandex thought about this and launched the Yandex.Fuel service.

The principle of operation of the service is very simple, certainly not more complicated than ordering a taxi. You drive up to a gas station, wait for a refueller, or insert a pistol into the tank yourself, open the Yandex.Fuel application, select the gas station you are looking for, indicate the dispenser number, enter the number of liters or amount, pay from the Yandex.Money wallet or from the linked MasterCard card or Maestro and wait for your car's tank to fill.

At the moment, the partners of the service are Lukoil (throughout Russia), as well as a number of local brands such as St. Petersburg PTK, Voronezh VTK and Omsk Topline. Yandex promises to open an API and make it possible to connect any gas station, so the list of available gas stations will gradually grow.

A pleasant bonus for me personally was the ability to link a Lukoil loyalty card in the application, so bonuses are accrued automatically after each refueling.

Conveniently? Not that word!

'Kinohod' – all cinemas in one application

Surely this is one of the most famous services from the selection to our audience, but suddenly, who does not know. In addition, in the regions, it began to work fully not so long ago – just a few months ago, in my provincial city there was only one cinema available, and now there is everything.

In fact, 'Kinohod' is an aggregator of cinemas. You simply select the movie you want, and the application lists the cinemas and sessions in order of geographic distance. You can buy tickets online, and if you also have a MasterCard / Maestro card, you will receive a 10% discount.

Thanks to “Kinohod” now you don't need to surf the sites of cinemas – everything is in one place, and instead of commissions – discounts.

ATMs of 'Tinkoff Bank' – a card is no longer needed, a smartphone is enough (even without NFC)

Tinkoff Bank ATMs are gradually starting to appear in our provinces, which are probably the most technologically advanced ATMs in Russia. Recently I managed to take advantage of this, I share my impressions.

The first thing I noticed when I first used Tinkoff Bank's ATM is that it is not at all necessary to take out the card. We are looking for the NFC icon, touch the smartphone or watch connected to Android Pay, Apple Pay or Samsung Pay, enter the pin code and work with the card without its physical presence at the ATM.

But what about those who do not have NFC in their smartphone? This is where the magic begins. Open the Tinkoff app on your smartphone, generate a QR code in it to withdraw cash or recharge your card, read this code using an ATM, and voila! We have just performed the operation without a physical card and without NFC in our smartphone. Like in China!

Bank representatives say that soon it will not be necessary to enter a pin code either, since ATMs will teach to recognize faces. But this is still only a prospect, albeit the nearest one.

Another plus of Tinkoff ATMs is that they all accept foreign currency. I sometimes have to deal with dollars and euros, and since I really do not like cash, it used to be a real quest to replenish foreign currency accounts through third-party banks. One iteration could take up to 1 hour. And now you can simply insert foreign bills into the ATM, and the job is done.

All this seems to be trifles, but extremely pleasant and comfortable.

Stocard – (almost) all bonus cards in the phone

Thanks to Apple Pay and analogs, personally, in 99% of cases, I do not need to take my wallet out of my bag when paying for something. Unfortunately, these wonderful technologies do not work with the vast majority of loyalty cards yet, at least in the provinces. But I managed to partially solve this problem by installing the Stocard app. I am sharing this experience with you.

Any cards that can be read in stores using a barcode can be added to Stocard. With cards with only a magnetic stripe, everything is complicated. Some application partners seem to be supported, but I could not face such. But even so, I managed to rid my wallet of half the cards, and life became a little easier.

The principle of operation is the simplest – you add your bonus cards to the application and henceforth show the barcode on the smartphone screen. In my case, it's still a little simpler – Stocard supports Apple Watch, so I use them at the checkout.

It's funny that even in a provincial town, only one cashier in a hundred is surprised at this. So no one accuses of fraud or black magic.

Russian Railways app – it's enough to enter passport data every time

The biggest pain when buying tickets on the Russian Railways website is that you cannot save passenger data for future purchases. For several years in a row, this flaw has irritated me and thousands of other people all over Russia who use the services of Russian Railways more than once a year. But everything changed when the official Russian Railways mobile app was released.

Surprisingly, the application turned out to be extremely convenient and well-made. And the most important thing is that we can enter the data of all family members once, add the RZD Bonus card and never waste time on this again. When you issue a ticket, simply select a passenger from the list, and you're done!

For some, this may be an insignificant trifle, but not for a person who has bought about a hundred tickets over the past two years.

By the way, it is still impossible to save data on the Russian Railways website.

Conclusion

Here are five little life hacks, some of which you may already be familiar with. I do not pretend to discover America, but I am sure that at least 1-2 points of the selection will be useful to many. I invite you to share your techno-life hacks in the comments – we will use it!