NFC Times Exclusive – As mainstream trusted service managers struggle to cope with a world in which their services are in much less demand, a tiny, self-funded start-up is seeking to carve out a niche as TSM for millions of fitness wristbands, festival bracelets and other lower-end wearables that might one day be enabled for payment.
That is a big “might,” since there is little solid evidence yet that consumers will take to paying with smart watches, wristbands, rings, belt clips or other wearables in a big way.
But UK-based start-up DigiSEq says it is seeing demand from wearable makers to add payments to their devices and has already notched two deals, one with a small company planning to launch a sports band in the contactless-payment hotspot of Australia and the other a large U.S.-based maker of fitness or health band trackers. Both want to offer open-loop payments from their wristbands.
