Personally I never found myself using my NFC payment watch. It felt like if I was venturing far enough to the store, I'm just going to bring my phone with me anyways. I wonder if this differs for areas that don't get as much suburban sprawl.

I use NFC payments on my watch all the time, even though I have my phone and card in my pocket. Tapping my watch is just easier than digging into my pockets and/or opening my wallet app on my phone.

i like you use NFC via watch way more than by Phone. I don't wanna take out my phone all the time, i'd like to look at my phone screen less and less as time goes on.

Yeah it's very useful if your PT system takes card (such as tube/buses in London).

I never bring my phone with me when I go running, but occasionally pick something up and pay with my watch afterwards

I personally don't use NFC payment at all. I just can't see the utility in it. If I leave the house I have my wallet, and I find it easier to take my card out of my wallet than to fiddle with NFC on my phone.

Sometimes I leave the house with only my phone. Why carry two things when one thing will do fine for a quick trip? Its my car keys, my credit card, my transit pass, etc.

I've been moving towards using NFC payments for activating gas pumps as those readers still have you fully insert your card exposing the full mag strip.

Its also often faster for me to just tap my phone than to take my wallet out, pull out the specific card I'm wanting to use to pay, tapping/inserting that card, putting that card back, and then putting my wallet back. Instead my phone which still has a touch unlock is already unlocked before I take it out of my pocket and ready to be tapped and then put back in my pocket.

I can't say I relate - for one thing I don't have any of those things on my phone (except payment), but also I don't want them on my phone. We put way too much on them already, imo. But regardless, I always have wallet, phone and keys any time I leave the house. It doesn't really take effort to bring them, and that way I won't need them.

How is that fiddling? Just put the phone to the terminal, that's it. Sometimes press finger to the fingerprint sensor.

For card, you need to get the wallet, get the card from the wallet, and then put it back.

Some people don't use wallet or put it close, because I only need wallet to pay or use loyalty card, and I can do that with my phone.

Wonder if this is a nationality thing? In the UK I'd say ~30% of sales are done via phones/watches these days.

That's fascinating to me, because many times I've tried to do that it's an exercise in frustration. Terminals don't always have the sensor in the same spot, phones sometimes don't register the connection, and so on. Maybe things work better in the UK?

It can be a bit difficult, particularly now that some phones are getting more demanding about re-authorising before it will go through. Tap-try to get fingerprint scanner working-tap again is a much less fluid procedure than tap-go.

The position thing is just something you get used to. There's not that many reader models in active use and most of them are pretty good about marking where the nfc reader is these days.

I’m in the US and in the last few years things have flipped to where I’m more surprised when a place doesn’t have tap to pay.

I use mine constantly, it’s been one of my favourite things to be able to leave the house and not having to take my wallet/phone with me.

Less to carry, less to idly distract myself with.

I use NFC for all my payments minus bars and restaurants. (NE USA) I also switched all my door locks to use Apple Home Key which is a fun party trick.

These use standard watch straps, so you could put them on one of those NFC-payment straps as a workaround.

Chameleon Ultra on the band

The deprecated Timex Pay (w/ Chase Bank) would be an option.

The chip inside claims to support Bluetooth Low Energy, Bluetooth mesh, NFC, Thread and Zigbee. Maybe someone can hack together a payments app using the NFC?

Payment is more of tamper resistance and trust problem than protocol problem. You don't want a hackable card tied to your credit.

Speak for yourself, I'd love one!

Banks probably don't want it, though.

You can't really, unless you get involved in the financial systems afaik. It's not just some open thing that anybody can implement; there's a chain of trust involved and for good reason.

Maybe you could reverse-engineer HCE from bank Android app, but that would be rather fragile.

Nope. I just use my phone.

anecdotally, NFC payment is my #1 use for Apple Watch, by far. It's so much work to pull out a phone and unlock it! :)

Tbf I want a ring to do it. Samsung execs screwed up bad when they released the galaxy ring not only without nfc payments but also for that horrendous price. What a joke, now the big boy companies are proving that once you ditch engineers for suits enshittification begins.