Swiss watch maker, Swatch Group AG (or just Swatch) has announced a normal watch with capable of making NFC-based payments at retailers. Dubbed the Swatch Bellamy, the watch will at first sell in China for a price tag of CNY 580 ($91) starting January 2016 from Swatch and Bocom outlets. The watch will rollout to the US and Switzerland at a later date.
Swatch teamed up with China Unionpay to allow users make payments at retail outfits having Unionpay Point-of-sale machines with the Bellamy and is also said to already be in discussions with one of the top five financial institutions in China – the Bank of Communication, with similar aim in mind.
If you are wondering how the Swatch Bellamy can make payments, well it has a NFC chip located under the dial which makes this possible and thus lets it works the same way as cards from Banks do. Asides that, the watch can only tell you the time with nothing of note on the specs sheet.
China Unionpay used to be the sole bank card payment network in China but the company is recently facing increased competition from third-party payment solutions in China with the Alibaba Group Holding Ltd being one of them while foreign firms, Samsung and Apple are both looking at possibilities to bring the Samsung Pay and Apple to China.
Source: Bloomberg Business
Image via Tech.sina.com.cn
