I've seen some of the great value for money Huawei and Xiaomi smartwatches for around $40 AUD and they seem to offer great value. I would definitely buy one if they had NFC. I've been researching around but it's hard to find one that supports NFC for less than $100.
Any suggestions from you guys that I might not know of?
If you can stretch your budget then there is the Honor Watch Magic
You can probably offset the GST with a cashback promo of 10% which seem to appear from time to time.
I wouldn't think that the Banks here will support any Smartwatches that aren't Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay, which is a bummer.
You could be REEEAAL cheap and get one of those Visa payband things from your bank, then 'relocate' the NFC coil to your watch.
Then you're not restricted by smartwatch compatibility, only your taste for improvised hardware…
Actually, that's not a bad idea!
Yeah, was going to say, I think Westpac offers it for free.
Yeah I might try this, see if I can open up a smart watch and stash it in there maybe?
Definitely will get the wearable paywear from my bank, as they provide it for free!
Hope it will fit!
I had an Optus Pay band, which had the coil inside a mini credit card about 1/2" square that squeezed into the silicon band. My bank has the dedicated Visa bands, which are narrower but also thicker, so I'm not entirely sure how they're built, but I don't know if there's removable bits or if the silicon is sealed.
I believe it'd also be possible to custom build a coil to match the actual NFC chip, so you could fit it into anything, but that's well beyond my current knowledge…
You and me both. Do you mean to say that all you would need is the coil without the chip if it was a custom built one? If so, you have my attention, as that would mean I could DIY my own NFC devices.
From my understanding though, the chip has the identification data on it, the coil is just a means of power like wireless charging. I think the actual data transfer is like WiFi. So how would the coil work on its own? I'm uber curious.
@adamiscoolization: I think there's a couple of NFC types - Single Wire Protocol was one style that experimented using your phone SIM card connected to the phones NFC coil, and I can't remember the other types - but they'd still all need a data chip of some form. They'd only be the tiny chips like in SIM or credit cards, but a chip nonetheless.
I know you can get the programmable NFC stickers, which are about 2cm round and flat, even through they're reprogrammable. I don't think they work with payments however as they obviously can't be made as secure.
@adamiscoolization: Hey OP, which solution did you ultimately go with? I'm still keen to either locate a cheap NFC watch or jerry rig a solution.
Don't know how I'd feel about trusting some cheap Chinese watch with my credit card payments.
What country is your iPhone from?
My Samsung is from South Korea, same as my Galaxy Watch. A company that has a privacy policy, and most likely much more secure servers and storage centres.
Except
Also keen to know.