Fit Pay Raises $3.1M To Enable Wearable Payments Players

It’s a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg situation. In order to fundamentally change how the world uses money, FinTech startups need to rely on traditional seed funding to get their ideas off the ground. Fortunately, for Fit Pay, it didn’t encounter much friction in its most recent attempt at scrounging up funding for its contactless payments revolution.

The wearables payments startup announced Thursday (Feb. 4) that it had secured $3.1 million in a seed funding round led by Giesecke & Devrient (G&D). Citing not only the additional capital but also G&D’s demonstrated expertise in the mobile security field, Fit Pay CEO Michael Orlando expressed his belief that the funding vindicates Fit Pay’s mission to bring faster, more flexible payments to wearable devices.

“The G&D investment not only validates our core business proposition of enabling a wider range of products to transact contactless payments but also brings a strategic partner that will help us accelerate our growth,” Orlando said in a statement.

The investment comes at a particularly opportune time for Fit Pay. In November, the company announced its Pagaré line of NFC-enabled smartwatch straps that would allow any wearable device to make contacless payments, regardless of the hardware and software of the device itself. The straps are designed to work only with Pebble’s line of smartwatches, but removable straps that take payment information with them could be an attractive feature as users begin to collect more and more wearable devices.

Fit Pay explained that, despite the additional $3.1 million in funding, it still plans on going forward with a planned Kickstarter campaign for its Pagaré smartwatch straps to bring them to commercial production. Scheduled to begin Feb. 8, the crowdfunding campaign might have to include some serious deal-sweeteners to keep backers from feeling like they’ve been taken advantage of by a device manufacturer already flush with cash.