The new wearables from Fit Pay could soon make it possible for people to pay for products with a flick of the wrist.
Owners of Pebble Time wearable technology devices may soon be able to take advantage of the convenience of contactless mobile payments among the other benefits of wearing their gadgets.
A Pagaré smartstrap Kickstarter campaign was recently launched by Fit Pay to make this happen.
The funding for this wearable technology would be used to support its final production and to be able to bring it to market. The Pagaré payment smartstrap has NFC technology embedded into it, as well as card network tokenization. In that way, it will be possible for these wearables to be read by any POS terminal with an NFC reader, which is quite commonplace at retail checkout counters around the world.
Essentially, if the NFC contactless payments symbol is displayed at a checkout counter, this wearable technology is compatible.
To use the smartstrap wearables, a user would simply need to wave his or her wrist over the reader terminal at the POS counter. In that way, the transaction can be completed and the wearer would never have to take out a wallet and swipe or tap a card. It wouldn’t even require a smartphone to be used, as is the case with other types of mobile wallet that have been trying to achieve widespread adoption over the last few years.
According to the chief exec at Pebble, Eric Migicovsky, “It’s a great example of how our open platform allows Pebble to become even more useful in the everyday lives of more people.” There are still a few weeks left to the Fit Pay campaign, as it will run until March 9 in order to bring in the $120,000 it requires from backers in order to get these wearables moving forward.
The company is currently working directly with the suppliers for Pebble in order to be able to provide the smartstrap wearable technology in exactly the same materials, finishes and colors as the Pebble Time, the Time Steel and the Time Round smartwatches. In that way, form will not be sacrificed to function.
New Year’s celebrations lead to more mobile spending throughout China
The Lunar New Year has come and gone and mobile commerce surged during the Chinese holiday. During the Lunar New Year, those living in China send one another traditional red packets, called hong bao. These red envelopes typically contain money and is something that many people look forward to receiving every year. With the emergency of mobile technology, the way people give hong bao to one another has changed, which has been good news for mobile commerce in general.
Payment platforms enable consumers to send and receive hong bao efficiently
Both WeChat and Alipay enable people to deliver hong bao cards to one another. Both platforms have become very popular in China, as they allow people to make purchases and send money to others. These two platforms have allowed mobile shopping to thrive in China and have given their owners, Tencent and Alibaba respectively, a competitive edge over those that would try to enter into China’s mobile commerce market. During the Lunar New Year, the platforms proved to be particularly effective in serving mobile consumers.
The number of hong bao being send through mobile services continues to rise ad mobile payments become more common
According to Tencent, more than 8 billion hong bao cards were exchanged during the Lunar New Year. This is eight times more than the number of hong bao that were sent last year. This is actually a trend that has been seen over the past few years. More consumers are becoming mobile-centric, which is making them more comfortable with the concept of mobile payments and how their devices can be used to connect with one another.
China continues to be an attractive mobile commerce market for many
This year, the hong bao may highlight the growing importance of mobile payments systems, as well as their value. During the third quarter of 2015, China’s mobile commerce space was valued at approximately $368 million. The country is considered the fastest growing mobile payments market in the world, attracting the attention of other companies that are in this sector.
