Tapped out: Why wearable payments and FashTech are back in vogue
We speak to the experts pushing innovation in tap-to-pay wearables
For all the advanced health sensors, training insights, and supercharged apps made accessible by wearables over the last decade, the simple art of tapping to pay remains one of the technology's most practical use cases.
In the initial years after the feature was introduced on the Apple Watch and Wear OS, there was something giddy about tapping with your wrist.
Whether I used it to bypass a barrier at a tube station, pay for a morning coffee, or - occasionally - grab a drink during a long run, watch payments unlocked convenience that the phone couldn’t replicate.
It’s a feeling we touched on in our cult hero wearables piece earlier this month, with industry analyst Ben Wood describing paying with a dedicated ring as a “magic trick”, despite it simply being a ceramic design with a payment card embedded.
Fast-forward nearly a decade since contactless payments were first introduced on wearables, though, and this superpower-like feeling has waned.
Contactless payments on wearables remain as convenient as ever (and I can attest that they still rescue me on long runs without my phone), but the innovation appears to have dried up.
Yet, behind the scenes, the landscape of wearable payments is still evolving - and experts believe we’re on the cusp of an exciting new chapter.
We spoke to them to find out more.
The current state of pay
Though the world of wearable payments appears to have stayed the same since its inception, the feature is more popular than ever.
In 2022, Juniper Research forecast that wearable payments would total around $500 billion in 2024, up from $42.3 billion in 2020. And the firm’s vice president of fintech market research Nick Maynard told PULSE by Wareable that continued adoption has played a key role in this kind of growth.