Nio Card Can Do Wireless Payments, Including Bitcoin Transfers

Some of the most innovative products are coming from Kickstarter and the nio card is a combination of several such devices. It’s a Bluetooth and NFC enabled card that can keep your phone and wallet on a digital chain, replace your wallet altogether – including support for Bitcoin transactions – and help you stay fit.

The nio card is security conscious – when connected to your phone via Bluetooth, it will alert you whenever the device goes out of range. Either because you dropped your walled or forgot your phone.

This feature is present in other Bluetooth accessories, but nio goes further. With an accelerometer in the card itself and that in your smartphone, the card and smartphone app can be set to sound an alarm when either is moved.

If you do lose your phone, anyone with an NFC-enabled phone can tap the card to see your contact info to return it. Also, it they have a nio app, the phone will upload the location to a map you can view on the web.

The card can also use that accelerometer to track your run, similar to the Fitbit.

Other uses for the nio card include wireless payment, with the (so far) unique option to pay and receive bitcoins. Receiving bitcoin payments is as easy as tapping a phone to the card. Payments are more locked down – you need to press the Payment button and even then it only works if your smartphone is in range (so if it’s lost or stolen, payments are disabled). There’s a two-factor authentication system too.

The nio card has 2GB of built-in storage for your sensitive data. The Bluenio team behind the card is developing way to use the nio as a replacement for your house keys too.You can back the nio card Kickstarter for £40 and receive a nio card. There’s an exclusive white card available too (just a few units left at the time of this writing). Packaging and shipping is scheduled for April next year, but as with all Kickstarter projects there’s no guarantees that there won’t be any delays.