Garanti Bankasi AS of Turkey said it is offering a watch equipped with a MasterCard Inc. PayPass contactless payment chip.
"Once again the spotlight will be on Turkey to see how the PayPass watches will fare in traditionally cash-only environments," Toni Merschen, the head of MasterCard's chip group, said Monday in a press release Monday.
Contactless cards are accepted at more than 600 locations in Turkey, including Burger King Holdings Inc.'s quick-serve restaurants, Starbucks Corp. coffee shops, Istanbul's ferry service, and at least one vendor at Istanbul's Ataturk International Airport.
Garanti was the first European banking company to issue contactless payment cards on the continent.
This is not the first payment watch; last summer Chinatrust Commercial Bank began offering a similar product in Taiwan, developed by the Austrian watchmaker LAKS GmbH and the Israeli technology company Track Innovations Ltd.
Neither MasterCard nor Garanti said who developed the Turkish watch.
