NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – U.S.-based wearables maker Fitbit in November plans to release its first non-smartwatch supporting its payments service, Fitbit Pay, with the recent unveiling of its new health and fitness tracker Charge 3–but as with its Versa smartwatch, released in April, the NFC payments feature will only be available on a “special edition” version of the tracker in the U.S. and likely in some other markets.
The announcement of the planned NFC-enabled tracker comes 10 months after CEO James Park promised that Fitbit would enable its entire range of wearables devices to support NFC payments over the following few years. Progress, however, has been slow since then, with the large wearables maker only enabling one additional device–the affordably-priced Versa–to support Fitbit Pay. That’s in addition to the Fitbit Ionic smartwatch–the first device to support Fitbit Pay, launched by the company last fall. Fitbit has released few other devices of any kind in the past year.
By comparison, Garmin has introduced four smartwatches that support its Garmin Pay service, launched around the same time as Fitbit Pay.
