Swatch’s Smartwatch Smart Payments Nearing Launch

Swatch is still looking to make inroads into the smartwatch market, with an emphasis on remote payment abilities, its CEO said.

As reported by TechCrunch on Thursday (May 28), Swatch CEO Nick Hayek said the company’s Internet-enabled smartwatch debut will be in Switzerland and “one big country” in August, according to comments the executive made at a shareholder meeting.

Though speculation may surround just which “big” market the company may be eyeing, reports indicate that Swatch already has an existing payments deal in China, its largest market, with China UnionPay.

The latest pronouncement by Hayek echoes a similar promise in March, when the executive said a smartwatch would be unveiled in May. Obviously that seems not to have been an accurate projection, but Forbes noted Thursday that there could actually be two watches, or even types, coming to stores in the late summer: one watch would have NFC ability – for mobile payments via China UnionPay and Visa — with the other to be used for displays, primarily of news and/or alerts tied to a smartphone.

The smartwatches will be compatible with both Android and Windows phones.

Swatch had already telegraphed its desire to come to market and compete against the Apple Watch. But though the company had already dipped a toe in that market as far back as the late 1990s, with watches that featured touchscreens, Hayek had seemed ambivalent about truly going into the smartwatch market.

Citigroup has estimated that smartwatches could represent a $10 billion industry by 2018, with the key audience comprised of those people who already wear watches. There are a few Swiss companies already in the process of developing their own smartwatch offerings, with notable peers including Richemont and TAG Heuer.

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