Future Fitbit Trackers May Let You Pay For Things

The idea behind fitness trackers is that users have to keep wearing them all the time so that they can get data about their exercise sessions, calories burned throughout the day, stairs claimed and even track their heart rate. If Fitbit’s latest acquisition is any indication, it appears that future Fitbit products will even let you pay for things on the go.

Fitbit has announced today that it’s acquiring Coin, a company which makes a “smart” credit card that digitally holds all of the user’s credit cards on a single unit.

The company hasn’t acquired Coin because it’s interested in this particular technology. Coin says that all of its existing products can be used until the internal batteries are dead, which will take a significant amount of time.

Fitbit is actually interested in Coin’s work on wearable methods of payment and since it makes wearable fitness trackers, one doesn’t have to be a genius to see the possibilities here.

It’s not like there aren’t any fitness trackers available on the market that can’t handle mobile payments. The Jawbone Up4 is capable of processing mobile payments with American Express cards so it won’t be surprising to see Fitbit come out with a similar product.

Fitbit does mention in its announcement that Coin’s technology is not going to be implemented in any of the products that it’s going to release in 2016, so we can expect to see the fruit of this new relationship at some point next year.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Gadgets
Tags: fitbit, Wearable Tech