Now you can pay with a wave of your hand: Rio Olympics-style pay ring widely available
During the Rio Olympics, athletes used a contactless payment ring to buy goods in the Olympic Village. Now an NFC ring has gone on sale that allows everyone to shop like an Olympian.
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The NFC Ring, built by the same company that made the rings for the Games, allows its wearer to wave their hand at a pay terminal instead of getting their wallet from their pocket and then pulling out their contactless credit or debit card.
The ring is available for pre-order from the website of its maker, NFCRing Inc, for £39.99 ($53) and is expected to ship around December.
The ring contains a secure microchip, an embedded NFC antenna and, unlike other wearables that can be used for payments, does not require a battery to function. It can be used to make Discover, MasterCard or Visa payments. It is also water-resistant up to a depth of 50m.
Like Apple Pay, the payment ring uses tokenisation technology to improve the security of payments compared to conventional magnetic stripe cards. However, in terms of functionality, it more closely resembles a contactless payment card.
Infineon, which made the chip, says that the ring gets its power from the electromagnetic field when it's held near to an NFC pay terminal. When held up to 4cm away from a reader, the chip communicates through its antenna and handles the payment within a few milliseconds.
The NFC ring could be a convenient way to pay for things, particularly for occasions when carrying a wallet is impractical. But those looking to completely replace multiple payment cards may find Apple Pay or Android Pay-enabled smartphones and smartwatches better equipped for the task.