UK rugby team Saracens season ticket adopts affordable NFC wristband

Season ticket holders of the English rugby club Saracens found something unusual in their welcome boxes this year: a rubber wristband with the team's logo, hidden on the inside. A string of 8-digit codes.

This is not the useless, cheap but morale-boosting wristband that fans used to wear to show their loyalty to their teams. It’s a digital wallet that makes paying for purchases via a contactless payment chip as fast and easy as using Apple Pay on the Apple Watch or Jawbone’s new Up4, which is scheduled to launch this summer.

Season ticket holders can now log into the team's website, enter the 8-digit code on their watch, add their credit card details (currently only Mastercard) and top up their wristband with £20 each time ( About $30).

Fans can then quickly pass through the stadium gate wearing the wristband and purchase food and beverages from merchants located around the stadium. At the same time, because the near field communication (NFC) technology built into the wristband uses "open loop" on the chip, ” and it could also be used by businesses outside the stadium.

This means that fans can use their wristbands to pay for tickets when taking buses, tubes or trains in London. London's public transport system now also accepts various contactless payment cards in addition to traditional tickets and Oyster cards. . The wristband can also be used in other Stores equipped with contactless payment registers. If fans get tired of their wristbands, they can throw them away if they want.

The wristband concept is similar to the MagicBand, which Disney launched in early 2013, a rubber wristband that visitors to Disney theme parks could use to enter parking lots or pay for meals (while wearing it) Tourists with wristbands tend to spend more). Unlike Gemalto wristbands, the open-loop components allow fans to use the wristbands outside the stadium.

This is the same payment function as the Apple Watch, which starts at $349, but the price is only a fraction of the price. Fans who purchase Saracens season tickets receive free wristbands, and Gemalto, the Dutch company that makes the wristbands, says its corporate customers can buy one for just a few cents, or up to a few dollars. You can buy a higher-quality wristband that will last for more than a year.

Gemalto said it costs slightly more to produce a temporary payment wearable than a contactless payment card. However, Gemalto UK vice president Howard Berg said that for customers, the real taboo is not cost. “The main challenge is figuring out how to use it.”

Gemalto's goal is to allow more people to use its wristbands outside the stadium as easily and regularly as they use a credit card, topping up when needed. One of the first benefits is that the wristbands are cheap to produce and, in many cases, can be obtained for free by consumers from the Sports clubs they support or banks with whom they have a business relationship.

In the second half of 2014, Spain's Caixa Bank began distributing 15,000 payment wristbands to customers who already had new contactless payment cards. All its customers can now use the wristband in more than 300,000 merchants across Spain where contactless payment registers are installed.

With one tap of the wristband, payments of up to 20 euros can be made, or higher amounts can be paid if the customer enters a pin code. The wristband is waterproof and available in different colors.

In September 2014, the British bank Barclays also made a similar attempt in the UK, giving away 10,000 free wristbands to its customers, which can be used in a manner similar to contactless payment cards.

The bPay service even lets non-Barclays customers sign up on its website to get a wristband, which can then be linked to their Mastercard or Visa card. In fact, Barclays Bank has been preparing to shut down the bPay service since May 31, and plans to replace it with another system that has not yet been announced.

Gemalto, best known for making the SIM cards used in smartphones and feature phones, started its own temporary wearables business about two years ago. Berg said Gemalto's earliest customers were stadiums and institutions hosting music festivals and sports concerts, where wristbands are the most convenient payment Tool when people hate carrying cash around for security reasons.

"People don't want to walk around with cash in their pockets," he added. "The phone works, but they don't want to have to whip out a £600 iPhone. They want something that's safe, unobtrusive and can even be given to their children."

Apple is often praised as a pioneer in technological innovation, leading everything from the rapid popularity of smartphones and tablets to the app economy.

It launched Apple Pay mobile payment service on iPhone 6 and Apple Watch, a move widely seen as opening the floodgates to another new technology.

While Apple has helped bring greater social acceptance of wrist-based payments, a wave of makeshift wearables from banks, sports clubs and other institutions could lead consumers to opt for simpler and easier-to-use products.

Berg suggested that the potential for distributing wristbands through sports clubs is much greater than through banks because of a problem Apple understands well: brand building.

“What sports clubs have is an element of loyalty,” he said. “Would you rather have the logo on your wristband be your local rugby club or Bank of America?”