As someone who has never been comfortable with enabling payment on my smartphone, I’ve watched the increasing presence of people “tapping” their iPhones or Android devices in bars, restaurants and on buses with the convenient glee that they seem to experience in every transaction.
I don’t personally want payment on my smartphone and I’m fine with a titanium-secured credit or debit card from a traditional and indeed a new-age challenger bank.
But that has kind of changed, in a connected sort of a way.
Mainly due to the smart use of login passkey options, the Curve banking app via Zepp Pay on the Amazfit smartwatch appears to be a much more sensible option. Once you’re wearing the watch, you can enable payment at any time through the Zepp Pay app.
If you take your watch off, nobody else can start paying with it if they don’t know your passcode… once you do enable the Zepp Pay app, it “pays” and connects for 60 seconds, which of course is plenty of time to make a contactless payment for your shopping or some other product.
What is the Zepp app?
Zepp is Amazfit’s app, all user interactions to manage the smartwatch are carried out through Zepp and there is no Amazfit app… a search for Amazfit on an app store will give you Zepp, just go with it, that’s how it works.
Users can use a Curve card with Zepp Pay on Amazfit by adding Curve card to Zepp Pay through the Zepp app, allowing for contactless payments directly from your wrist.
Amazfit’s Zepp Pay is a contactless payment system that works with the Curve digital wallet app, allowing users to add their Curve card to their Amazfit Balance smartwatch.
Some discussion forums have complained about the “requirement” to order a Curve physical card, but that’s not required and that issue (if it did exist) may be legacy now. That said, if you do want to order a card it’s £5 at the time of writing, which is the same cost as most challenger banks.
Cash or card please?
In terms of user experience, I gave it a go in our local Wetherspoons and ordered two pints of real ale.
The bar person asked their normal “cash or card?” question and I geekily and smugly replied “neither, smartwatch actually” and promptly paid for my drinks.
An older customer next to me (Wetherspoons has plenty of those, as you may know) saw me buy beer with my watch and simply said, “Whatever next eh? It’s just frightening.”
It’s a very convenient option that only requires you to enter your passkey code once as you put the device on and so seems more secure and easy-to-use.
Cheers, literally.