Since 2015, Barclaycard’s touchless payment technology, bPay, has been used in over 1 million transactions totaling £6.6m. Their proprietary technology has been used in wristbands, fobs, and loops. Barclaycard has many partnerships with fashion brands to embed bPay into articles of clothes and wearables.
There has been new deals. The first includes a partnership with DCK, who source 60 million pieces of jewelry each year. They plan to turn their high-end bracelets into mobile wallets. Their second deal is with Tappy Technologies. They will turn luxury timepieces into payment devices.
I believe this is a great thing for mobile payments, although I think that there some barriers to overcome for fashion-oriented products. First, the existing market share of the Apple Watch might deter people from paying premiums for bPay integrated jewelry. Apple partners with fashion brands to provide its customers with fashion trendy bands. So Barclaycard’s need to be aggressive in their product integration and rollout. Furthermore, the wearables have a transaction limit of £30 at a time. It makes sense to have a low limit in case you lose your wearable. But there are two-factor authentication systems available. Apple uses its biometric sensors. Perhaps the fashion bands can use a token system and authorize all transactions for a period of time. Users could deactivate the band as a failsafe.
Barclaycard is making good strides in the right direction, but might be late to the game.
https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/30190/barclaycard-strikes-new-wearable-deals-for-contactless-jewellery-and-watches