AmEx Connects with Jawbone for Wearable Payments

Want a device that can track how many calories you’ve burned, count your steps, and…help you spend some money?

That seems to be the idea for American Express and wearable products company Jawbone, as the duo is preparing to announce plans this week for AmEx cardholders to be able to make purchases with their fitness band (at select vendors), according to The Wall Street Journal.

The source who shared the information with WSJ does not believe that the AmEx-payment affiliation will be part of Jawbone’s upcoming release, the UP3 (due to market later this month), but rather will be integrated into another yet-to-be-named fitness band down the line.

It is unknown at this time, states the report, if Jawbone will eventually release a fitness band that would incorporate other brands of payment such as Visa or MasterCard. Expected as a feature of the AmEx-linked product is that — like the recently released Apple Watch — it will only work at brick-and-mortar locations that are NFC enabled.

A collaboration between AmEx and Jawbone would follow the Apple Watch as the latest move for payments capabilities away from traditional plastic cards (and smartphones) to wearable devices. Last month, Everlink unveiled its own wearable payments technology, DebitWear, on a trial basis in Canada; even more recently, Alipay announced plans to link its mobile wallet with Xiaomi’s Mi Band fitness bracelets.

Despite the swell of activity surrounding the application of payment technology to wearable devices, it may still be too early to tell if 2015 will be the year for wearables. As the WSJ story points out, fewer than 10 percent of merchants in the U.S. are presently equipped to accept NFC-based payments. If merchants hope to cater to consumers wearing items like an AmEx-payment-equipped Jawbone fitness band, their point-of-sale technology is due for a workout.