FitBit, the makers of various popular wearable technologies, announced the acquisition of specific assets from Coin, a mobile payments company, last week.
The deal allows
FitBit to use Coin’s intellectual property to develop a wearable payment solution for its own products.
Fitbit will retain some of
Coin’s personnel, but has said that it won’t produce any products with new payment technology incorporated by the end of 2016.
Coin 2.0—a credit card-shaped credit card that
incorporates all of your credit cards into one card—was not included in the purchase, and current customers will be allowed to continue to use it until its batteries run out.
Coin
Rewards and the Coin Developer program are being discontinued as well.
The gradular details of the deal haven’t yet been released, but FitBit is apparently reacting to moves that its
competitors have made, some of whom already offer wearable mobile payments with their devices. FitBit is reportedly most interested in Coin’s forays into near-field communication (NFC)
technologies that will enable “tap to transact” style interactions in devices.
So far, it’s unclear whether mobile payments are actually a desirable service for consumers of
wearable technologies. It’s also not clear how FitBit will make money from such a service, but there are a number of models out there to choose from.