A cheaper, easier, better alternative to Apple Pay?

A cheaper, easier, better alternative to Apple Pay?

The last thing Londoners needed was a way of contacting less, but the rollout of Apple Pay in the UK this week has seen news outlets and consumers celebrate the second coming of contactless payment as if we’ve just discovered fire.

The euphoria that gripped a usually placid Oxford Street audience yesterday evening when a man bought a pack of chewing gum with his phone gives you an idea of how wearables and new technology still inspire ‘ahhh’s’ and ‘oooh’s’ as if we’ve suddenly all turned into the green aliens from Toy Story.

You forget how long contactless cards have been around . They’ve been around in the UK since 2008 and as of May 2013, there were already 32.5 million contactless cards in circulation.

While Apple Pay is the shiny new play thing in the toy box, Barclays have been piggybacking onto the wearbles trend with their new contactless payment option, and it’s one I’ve been using since the turn of the year.

The bPay band has recently been released as a consumer product, offering a contactless solution in a wristband, keyring fob or sticker for your phone. It works like a PAYG phone, allowing you to top up your respective device via the website or mobile app.

Using the wristband to pay for everything from beer, bus journeys, fast food and clothes has generated some interesting responses. Everything from the confused cashier wondering if I was using a clever piece of tech to hack the card machine, to those who gaze in sheer wonder and are happy to hold up queue lines to find out exactly what is on my wrist.

Some of my friends remarked they had no idea I was into fitness, thinking the band was some kind of activity tracker. Fairly offensive stuff.

There were a couple of times when the band, for one reason or another, didn’t work. This was embarrassing, you could practically hear the thoughts of conservative shoppers behind me which went something like ‘just use your card you smug little timewaster’.

For now, the retail version of bPay has been event-free, providing a simple alternative to my old-fashioned wallet. I don’t have to get anything out of my pocket, it won’t run out of battery, I won’t be using it to do something else on it when I need to pay and if I lose it, it’s not the end of the world.

Forrester has predicted that 80-90% of wearables will fail and while certain devices are sorry attempts by tech giants to ride the wearable wave, the bPay band has the simplicity and potential use to suggest it won’t fall away anytime soon.