We thought phone payments are the wave of the future. But how about paying with your NFC-enabled fitness device?
Fitbit and Jawbone are two of the more popular health-tracking devices, keeping tabs on the wearer’s physical activity, miles walked, calories burned, etc.
Sources in the Wall Street Journal report that Amex will soon be announcing a partnership with Jawbone to allow payments to be made directly from the fitness device using NFC technology. Of course, the device will only work currently at the small percentage of merchants who have payment systems which are Near Field Technology enabled. The payments feature by Jawbone won’t be available in the newest device being  shipped later this month, rather at some future time.
No official word yet from Amex of Jawbone, and no word if the new device will be able to be used with other payment processors like Visa and Mastercard.
The device will compete Apple’s smartwatch to allow payments directly from your wrist, without having to reach in your pocket for your phone.
Personally, all these additional payment enabled devices seem like overkill to me. Since everyone always has their phone on them (when working, eating, exercising, talking…) it makes more sense to just take care of all payments from the phone. Sure, it could be slightly more convenient to be able to do it from your watch or fitness device, but it seems excessive to me.
