Making payments using a smartphone is common now, but how about using wearable devices to do that? The Royal Bank of Canada is on the process of providing their clients with the option of making payments using a smart wristband. They believe that the shoppers are now ready to take payment to the next level with the use of wearable devices on their wrist.
Nymi
The Royal Bank of Canada has teamed up with Bionym, a technology developer based in Toronto to test out Nymi, a smart wristband. This wearable device will be able to recognize the unique heartbeat of the wearers and will allow them to make purchases by charging their credit cards. The band looks like a watch. RBC plans to provide 250 wristbands to their customers as well as staff members by next year under a pilot project in Toronto. The project will run through February. The Bank has plans to roll out Nymi band throughout the country in the future.
As of now, only MasterCard will be available for use with the Nymi band. However, RBC plans to permit debit transactions eventually.
There are sensors in the wristband which are set up to identify the unique electrical signals that are discharged by the wearer’s heart. If the heartbeat identifier is not there, the Nymi band will stop working. This will render it useless to anybody who steals the band and tries to access your credit card details.
Introducing More Options
According to the head of Royal Bank’s payment innovation operations, Jeremy Bornstein, the bank is paying more attention on its payment technology because it wants to introduce more options for the customers. They plan to move past the test period quickly and provide their clients with the choice to decide what they are paying with and also how they are making the payments.
The Bank expects that in the next few years, the popularity of mobile payment options will increase as more customers ditch their physical wallet in favour of digital ones.
The company behind the development of the Nymi band, expects that in the future this device will be used majorly as a unique identification device that could be a substitute for your computer’s password, you car’s keys and also a way to check in to the room of your hotel.
The higher level of encryption makes it a probable choice to use in different industries other than banking.
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