Fitbit buys Coin assets, makes plans to enter same mobile payment space as Apple Pay

AppleInsider

Fitbit on Wednesday announced the purchase of Coin's wearable payments assets, a takeover which should put Fitbit on a path to launching its own mobile payments technology sometime in 2017, and hence competing even more closely with Apple.

There are "no plans" to integrate Coin's technology into products launching later in 2016, Fitbit said in a press release. Until the Fitbit deal, Coin had already signed up several partners for its wearables platform, like MasterCard, Atlas Wearables, Moov, and Omate.

Notably absent from the deal is Coin's signature product, the Coin 2.0, which lets users store multiple credit cards on a single device. The company announced that the Coin 2.0 will no longer be sold, and that existing units will only continue to work for the duration of their batteries, which is up to two years. Coin Rewards and the Coin Developer Program are being shut down immediately.

Fitbit currently leads the wearables market, despite challenges from Apple, Garmin, and a plethora of Android Wear device makers. Although Fitbit's devices are almost exclusively health- and fitness-focused, mobile payments could be a way of staving off competition from the Apple Watch, a more expensive all-in-one device with Apple Pay.

Apple's plans for a second-generation Watch have mostly been kept under wraps. Rumors have suggested however that it might get a standalone 4G connection, allowing people to use it without having an iPhone nearby.

mac_128

Not unsurprising. Leverage dominance in a market space, and introduce a feature that many of your customers may want, without having to pay the premium the Watch commands for features not necessarily desired. I would expect to see this technology incorporated into even Rolexes and other mechanical watches eventually, along with possibly even biometric sensors.

potatoleeksoup

I have never seen a coin device out in the wild.

visualseed

mac_128 said:

Not unsurprising. Leverage dominance in a market space, and introduce a feature that many of your customers may want, without having to pay the premium the Watch commands for features not necessarily desired. I would expect to see this technology incorporated into even Rolexes and other mechanical watches eventually, along with possibly even biometric sensors.

Seen this before. While it starts as a feature here and a feature there, soon it becomes a feature bloated device commanding a price similar to the device it was designed to compete with but can't offer any of the advantages of deep and wide support across an ecosystem. Eventually another startup will come along and offer a plain Jane fitness tracker that everyone will flock to because it just does one thing. You either are in one camp or the other. There is no sustainable middle ground.

adrayven

potatoleeksoup said:

I have never seen a coin device out in the wild.

I looked at both Coin and Plastc. Much prefer Plastc's technology and so far they have been much more responsive to customers and this is before the product initial public shipping in September. Plastc has some big announcement today as well..

macplusplus

All those failed devices try to catch some niche market positions against Apple Watch. Futile anyway...

funstraw

I have never seen a coin device out

potatoleeksoup said:

I have never seen a coin device out in the wild.

I have one. I was really hoping to not have to carry credit cards and other id's. I still need to carry them as backup. And since, when I do try to use it, it is 50/50 on whether it works or not, I feel like the idiot who is holding up the line with his stupid gizmo. I've pretty much abandoned it.

focher

funstraw said:

I have never seen a coin device out

potatoleeksoup said:

I have never seen a coin device out in the wild.

I have one. I was really hoping to not have to carry credit cards and other id's. I still need to carry them as backup. And since, when I do try to use it, it is 50/50 on whether it works or not, I feel like the idiot who is holding up the line with his stupid gizmo. I've pretty much abandoned it.

Exactly the same for me. I even received the 2.0 version as my first one died. It was so hit and miss, I just stopped being bothered. There's some social functionality in the Coin app that lets people report if the Coin worked successfully at the location, but I just couldn't be bothered. They could have added the functionality to have the app just display on the Coin "No Go" when it wasn't gonna work at the current location.

apple head

What. The. Heck. My world view has been shattered. Of course, they haven't said that they're integrating this into their products yet, so maybe they want it for other reasons. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 

larrya

macplusplus said:

All those failed devices try to catch some niche market positions against Apple Watch. Futile anyway...

"Failed"?  Premature much?  Fitbit outsells AW. 

tommy0guns

larrya said:

macplusplus said:

All those failed devices try to catch some niche market positions against Apple Watch. Futile anyway...

"Failed"?  Premature much?  Fitbit outsells AW. 

In 2008, pagers outsold iPhones. 

jbdragon

funstraw said:

I have never seen a coin device out

potatoleeksoup said:

I have never seen a coin device out in the wild.

I have one. I was really hoping to not have to carry credit cards and other id's. I still need to carry them as backup. And since, when I do try to use it, it is 50/50 on whether it works or not, I feel like the idiot who is holding up the line with his stupid gizmo. I've pretty much abandoned it.

I've heard this. You're pay $100 for a device that has a 50/50 chance of working. It's not really saving to from all the other cards you still have to carry. Card swiping is going away. NFC support is growing. Apple Pay is working at more and more places.

jbdragon

tommy0guns said:

larrya said:

"Failed"?  Premature much?  Fitbit outsells AW. 

In 2008, pagers outsold iPhones. 

Fitbit outsells I guess, but how many of them are the cheapest versions they have? I assume the one with NFC/COIN support will be the high end versions. The versions that are almost in the Apple Watch price range that do a fraction of the functions of the Apple Watch.