NFC Times Exclusive Insight – As payments companies pin their hopes on wearables becoming the next wave of portable payments devices, not surprisingly there is more hype than substance when it comes to commercial launches.
But that could be about to change, with two start-ups that have geared up to provision credit and debit cards onto wearables telling NFC Times that they expect some of the first fitness bands and smart jewelry, as well as more smartwatches capable of NFC payment to hit the market this year. If the launches come to pass, as expected, they would join Apple Watch and a few other higher-end payments wearables on the market.
One of the new wearables provisioning companies, San Francisco-based start-up Fit Pay, says it has signed deals with three of the four major payments schemes in the U.S. to use the schemes’ tokenization aggregator services as part of its offer to wearables makers to provision open-loop payment applications on devices after they reach the hands of consumers.
