NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Danske Bank, Denmark’s largest financial institution, is pitting its planned low-tech FastPay payments wearables against Apple Watch and some other higher-end wearables using tokenization, as it launches a large pilot starting this month in Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
Denmark-based Danske Bank, which does not participate in Apple Pay, is planning to use prepersonalized contactless chips along with chip holders that consumers would order and attach to bracelets, wristbands and key rings. The bank, however, doesn't shun all high-end wearables, participating in payments services and smartwatches from Fitbit and Garmin.
The low-tech wearables Danske Bank is planning to promote are similar to the bPay “loop” product from UK bank Barclays. Loop is a silicone attachment with a prepersonalized and provisioned chip that can be attached to watchbands and other wristbands and bracelets. Barclays sells other wearables containing bPay chips, and while the transactions are conducted on POS terminals with a Visa-branded Barclays prepaid card account, consumers can fund the accounts with any Visa- or Mastercard-branded card. Barclays and its Barclarycard unit is also working with several mainly analog watchmakers to embed bPay-enabled chips in their watchbands
