The Kerv payment ring is available in the UK for £99 if you’re someone who has been looking for a simple way to make payments without having to pull out cash or a credit or debit card every time you need to purchase something. Similar in fashion to the way you can tap your Samsung Gear S3 or an Android Pay-enabled device to payment terminals to pay for goods, the Kerv payment ring is a contactless payment ring that you also tap to payment terminals, though it won’t necessarily work in the same amount of places. The idea of paying for something with just a ring you wear on your finger though certainly must appeal to those who value convenience and is sure to grab the attention of those types of consumers.
The Kerv comes in multiple color options and at the moment it seems you can only purchase it from the Kerv online store which you access from the company’s main website. While the outside of the ring can only be picked up in Black or White, the various combinations come from the different colors that are available for the inside of the ring which are matched up with both outside colors. At the moment you can only purchase the ring if you live in the UK as it won’t give you an option to ship it anywhere outside the country.
Having said that, this doesn’t mean that the launch of Kerv won’t happen elsewhere as it’s been said they have plans to launch the ring in the U.S. and in Australia, but are waiting on the results of the UK launch before they move forward with those other markets. With Kerv, you don’t actually attach a credit or debit card from your bank to the ring. Instead, the ring will ship with a prepaid MasterCard account that you can load money onto and when you tap the ring to pay it pulls from this card. There are also plans to support PayPal, or at least that’s the hope from Kerv, which would certainly open up more options for consumers who choose to give the Kerv Ring a shot. There is a caveat to using the Kerv. For example, it only works for payments up to £30 according to the website, though payments are one-tap which makes things easy. Although purchase amounts seem to be limited, customers won’t need to use a PIN to make the payment and the ring can also be used to unlock doors via the NFC technology that’s built into the ring if people have a compatible lock. It also doesn’t need to be charged up and you don’t have to pair it with a smartphone, so it seems like a pretty seamless way to pay.