Formidable Wearable Payment Gadgets

Wearables aren't just for showing smartphone notifications and tracking your level of fitness or lack of it. A growing number of them are adding contactless payments into the mix.

Enabling you to save time and stop fumbling in your wallet for the right bank card, contactless payments are quickly gaining pace. The technology is tested and easy to implement, and that means we're seeing it appear in all sorts of places.

The likes of household names like Ringly, Mondaine and Bulgari have plans to add mobile payment support to their wearables in the future, but for the time being, here are the outstanding ones that pay for themselves right now.

Jawbone UP4

If you are in the US, then you can pick up the UP4 and the fitness tracker will let you pick up some groceries as well as record your activity 24/7. You get everything that the UP3 has including the heart rate monitor, but with the addition of American Express payments at participating retailers. Your Amex card is authenticated through the Jawbone app, and you can then swipe your wrist to pay — with or without your phone.

Apple Watch

Yes, the Apple Watch will let you pay for stuff. Thanks to Apple Pay, which is now live in the UK, US, Australia and a few other countries, it's a portable payment device as well as a smart time piece. Your iPhone handles the job of adding debit and credit cards, as well as verifying your identity, and you can then pay using the Apple Watch with a flick of your wrist.

Samsung Gear S2

Samsung knows that to get its Samsung Pay service off the ground it needs a wearable to go with it: and so it made and released the Gear S2. Perhaps the best smartwatch yet from Samsung. It has a clever rotating bezel and an integrated NFC chip enabling you to make payments on the go. You can use the Gear S2 (and Samsung Pay) with most newer Android phones and apparently iOS support is on the way.

Microsoft Band 2

Like the UP4, the second generation offers mobile payments, but you'll need to be in the US and you can only buy something in Starbucks. To get it set up on the feature packed fitness tracker/smartwatch hybrid, you'll need to add the Starbucks tile to your Microsoft Band 2 via the Microsoft Health app.

When you're ready to pay, turn the screen on, select the Starbucks tile and a barcode will pop up. Hold it in front of the cashier's scanner and you've paid for your coffee or smoothie.

Lyle & Scott bPay jacket

If wearing something around your wrist is not really your style then thanks to Lyle & Scott and Barclays you can have some NFC payment goodness built right into your jacket. The payment bit is hidden in the cuff of your sleeve, and with bPay inside it means you can use your credit or debit card (from Barclays or any other bank) to complete transactions in hundreds of thousands of places in the UK.

Smart Clothing

Smart clothing took its first tentative baby steps in 2015 and while it has not quite gone mainstream just yet, more companies are starting to play around with the concept of connected garments. Much more than strapping gadgets to our wrists, faces, ears and feet, smart clothing can constantly track our heart rate, monitor our emotions and even pay for our Starbucks. All without grabbing a phone or even tapping a smartwatch screen. 

Samsung NFC Suit

Samsung is going big on smart clothing. The Korean giant also has an NFC smart suit, built in collaboration with Rogatis, that lets the wearer unlock their phone, swap business cards digitally and set gadgets to office and drive modes.

It's already on sale in South Korea with no news yet as to whether it's going to break out into other territories/countries.

Topshop x bPay band

Don't worry, you don't have to fork out for a Lyle & Scott jacket if you want to be able to take advantage of Barclays bPay technology (remember you can register a card from any bank, even though Barclays develops the app). There's also a band that you can pick up very cheaply to use at some 300,000 retailers in the UK that now has an increased ￡30 limit, although it doesn't do anything else except handle mobile payments: you might have to wear a smartwatch alongside it.

"Ordinary" Watches

Another approach to the payments watch comes from Watch2Pay. It doesn't have the bells and whistles of a full-featured smartwatch, but it comes with a full-featured prepaid card that supports direct deposit, ATM withdrawals, mobile account access, bill payments and alerts. 

Clip-on NFC

Motorola now distributes Skip, a magnetic NFC clip meant to stick to users' clothing. Right now the technology can be used to unlock some Motorola phones, but if it takes off, an NFC-embedded clip could see wider use in the payments industry and beyond. 

Kerv - The worlds first payment contactless ring

Kerv works all by itself, so you don't need to pair it with a smartphone to make a payment. Unlike smartphones and smart watches, Kerv never needs charging, so you'll always be able to pay. For extra peace of mind, you can use the app to switch Kerv on or off, set restrictions and get transaction alerts. Whether you're in the pool or under the sea, Kerv will always work when you get out.

PayCapsule-Flex – Secure Contactless Wearable Payment Device

Small enough to fit into a wristband, a cuff or even a ring jewelry. The PayCapsule-Flex offers great flexibility and can be used to make payments wherever contactless payments are accepted.

Payment-enabled wool glove

Another inventive Barclaycard wearable is its payment enabled wool glove. It seems like a good fit for colder regions, but by design it covers up the user's hands, thus preventing consumers from using other payment systems that employ fingerprint authentication, such as Apple Pay.

Oyster Nails

Wearable Tech Nailing It with Press-On Payments. This is not on the market yet. The payment-enabled fingernails project -- and the surrounding media attention -- demonstrates that wearable payments have become more than just experimental.

Therefore, to effectively embrace wearable technology, businesses must put the user at the centre of the activity, reshaping an entire enterprise and its capabilities system around the customer or user experience. There is still room for improvement. Wearable devices still require the user to interact with hardware in some way, and thus there is still friction in the payment process. Bluetooth beacons which are used primarily for marketing by communicating with a shopper's smartphone app, could make it possible to accept a mobile payment without the consumer taking out the phone (or smartwatch) to pay.

  So put the Bank card down and pay with the gadgets on your body