Fitbit's been trying for more than a year to get NFC payment technology into its products; we picked up a strong rumor a few months ago (which we were unable to adequately confirm) that Fitbit had built production quantities of a fitness tracker with payment tech but was unable to get it to work properly. Today comes news that Fitbit has bought the wearable payment tech … [Read more...]
MasterCard Wants to Turn Wearables Into Payment Devices
It's hardly a secret that MasterCard is hot on wearables; the company's been talking about it for years and has even published an API to let programmers access its tokenization and payment systems. But earlier this week, MasterCard started to get very specific, showing wireless payment systems in Nymi authentication wristbands, Ringly jewelry, TrackR device locators, and GM car … [Read more...]
Nymi Completes First Commercial Transaction Using Heartbeat ID
We've written before about Nymi, which makes a wristband that uses your unique heart pattern to authenticate your identity. For the first time, Nymi has been used to make a credit card payment. The payment was made on July 10 as part of a pilot project with TD Bank and MasterCard in Toronto, Ottawa, and Regina (that's in Saskatchewan -- north of North Dakota and Montana). In … [Read more...]