Pebble Smartstrap: NFC Payments

The Problem

Mobile payments may be on the rise but using your phone as a payment instrument is really not much different then using your wallet. Instead of reaching into your pocket to pull out a credit card, now you're pulling out your phone and opening an app. Same old experience, same friction, different tools. 

The Solution

FitPay has created a platform that provides secure, tokenized payment and authentication services for wearable devices.  CONNECTEDEVICE has created a robust, secure hardware platform for wearable devices.

Together, we are creating a hands-free, phone-free, friction-free experience. Simply walk up, tap to pay and you're done.  

The Challenge

Real-time provisioning of tokenized card data onto a secure element for the purpose of making contactless NFC payments is a daunting technical challenge. In addition to the business agreements and technical integrations required by the major card networks, producing a secure, low-power, miniaturized hardware stack that blends seamlessly into an attractive form factor requires a rare blend of software and hardware acumen.

The Hackathon

FitPay, in partnership with CONNECTEDEVICE, has decided to tackle this challenging business problem by creating a payment-capable smartstrap for the Pebble Time. Our goal: To load a payment applet through the smartstrap API into our secure element, board a credit card through the Pebble app, tokenize the card via the FitPay API, send the token back to the secure element, then perform a completely secure, contactless transaction on a local point-of-sale terminal before confirming the transaction on the watch. End-to-end secure, contactless payments.     

Wiring, Wireframes and Webviews

The team split up to work on different aspects of the project. Peter and Scott tackled the challenging secure element provisioning. Working with a licensed payment applet provided by Discover Financial Services, the pair have been wiring everything up and producing the APDU commands that allow us to communicate with the SE, which will ultimately store the tokenized card data provided by the user through the Pebble app.

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To use the FitPay platform a user will need to create an account and board one or more credit cards.  Carol and Tim worked hand-in-hand to produce an Angular web interface for our existing API that could be easily executed inside of the Pebble app. This simple UI allows the user to perform the basic actions necessary to successfully tokenize their credentials.

Rapid prototype wireframes were also created to display a potential workflow on the watch that we could easily interact with. The goal was create an easily adaptable tool that could be used as a reference design for the actual FitPay watch app. 

Ben worked on the communication between the strap and the watch, providing the necessary communication protocol required to transfer our APDU commands to the secure element. We are new to C, so it has proven to be a real challenge!

After some long hours and very hard work by the entire team, the very first retail based transaction on the Pebble Time!

What's Next?

FitPay and CONNECTEDEVICE will be working hard to bring this new payment enabled smart strap to market in the near future, sign up to follow our progress!