NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – LAS VEGAS: Fitbit CEO James Park today said the large wearables maker plans to enable contactless payments across its entire range of devices over the next few years using NFC technology, a move he said he hopes will help make contactless payments “ubiquitous around the world.”
But the bold plans will not be easy to carry out. Fitbit began rolling out its NFC-enabled payments service, Fitbit Pay, earlier this month with the launch of its high-end Fitbit Ionic, its first real smartwatch. The new smartwatch and payments service competes directly with Apple Watch and Apple Pay.
“Our product strategy in the next few years is to include NFC across our product line, whether it's our most expensive device or our most affordable device, around $50,” said Park, who co-founded Fitbit in 2007, speaking at the Money 20/20 fintech show today in Las Vegas. “And we’ve shipped 67 million devices to date; we ship tens of millions of devices annually. And so you can quickly see how this becomes a pretty rapid footprint for contactless payments.”
