3.15.17: Your morning briefing

Enjoy complimentary access to top ideas and insights — selected by our editors.

Welcome to the PaymentsSource Morning Briefing, delivered daily. The information you need to start your day, including top headlines from PaymentsSource and around the Web:

Visa is sticking with shades: Most wearable payment concepts assume the wearer won't have to take off whatever garment or jewelry is being used to make payments. Not so with Visa's WaveShades, a pair of contactless-enabled sunglasses the card network began testing last month at the St. Jerome's Laneway Festival in Australia. Visa is planning to test its sunglasses again at the World Surf League’s 2017 Quiksilver and Roxy Pro Gold Coast competition, which Visa sponsors, according to The Verge. As before, Visa expects users would remove the sunglasses to tap them against a payment device.

DimaSobko/dimasobko - Fotolia

Investing in perks: Sift, a company that helps consumers spot underused credit card perks, has raised raised $1.5 million from Liquid 2 Ventures, Plug and Play ventures, Lodestar Ventures, Band of Angels and Sophia Collier, according to TechCrunch. Sift's model spotlights lesser-used card rewards such as price protection and extended warranties. It claims to have already processed $200,000 in refunds for its 5,500 users.

Big numbers for N26: N26, a German digital bank that was among the first companies to use Apple's Siri for voice-controlled payments, has added 300,000 users since its launch in 2015, the bank announced on its website. N26 is apparently favored by travelers; travel is its top purchase category, and its Mastercard users have transacted in 140 currencies, it said. N26 has customers in 17 countries across Europe, collectively making 1,900 card payments per hour, the bank said.

Designer payments: The newest version of Google's Android Wear smartwatch platform brings Android Pay to users' wrists, and the latest batch of compatible watches aren't made for the budget-minded. Swiss watchmaker Tag Heuer's new Connected Modular 45 watch starts at $1,650, with about 500 different design options to choose from, TechCrunch reports. And its beauty is not just skin deep: The watch has NFC and runs Android Wear 2.0, making it one of the few smartwatches capable of supporting Android Pay.

From the Web (powered by Wiser)

These charts show bitcoin may be turning into a real currency
Quartz • Joon Ian Wong
When bitcoin first hit the mainstream a few years ago, it was believed it could replace cash and credit cards as a way to pay…

15% Prefer To Pay With Digital Wallet; 53% Still Like Cash
MediaPost • Chuck Martin
Digital wallets continue to look for some respect. After kicking around for years, a mere 16% of consumers have ever used a digital wallet, based on a new study. Even worse, consumer awareness and understanding of digital wallets is low, according to...

Gmail On Android Adds Support For Payments
Valuewalk.com • Michelle Jones
Gmail on Android now allows users to send money to each other directly through the app. The feature has already been available to desktop users for the last several years, but Google has added Google Wallet Support to the Android […] The...

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