Cash, card or ring: tap to pay meets an exciting form factor

The 7 Ring is a passive smart wearable finger ring that leverages NFC technology for safe, contactless payments

- Nitin Sreedhar

You are shopping in your favourite grocery store, and now it's time to pay. But instead of reaching for your wallet, pulling out your credit card, entering your PIN or positioning your smartphone camera to scan a QR code, you place your fist on the point-of-sale (POS) machine, touch the POS machine with the middle joint of your finger. That's it. Your payment's done thanks to the ring on your finger.

"The ring is an identifier. It's like a card but in a different form factor," says Vijay Khubchandani, founder and CEO, of Sevenring Innovations Pvt. Ltd, the makers of 7 Ring, a smart passive wearable finger ring for contactless payments.

While wrist-worn wearables are still grabbing attention, smart rings are slowly sparking an interest in wearable technology across different use cases.

But unlike other smart rings, the 7 Ring, which can be worn on any finger, is not about fitness and health metrics but making payments easier. It doesn't require a power source and works on NFC (near field communications) technology, a short-range wireless connectivity standard that uses magnetic field induction to enable communication between devices when touched together or brought within a few centimetres.

There's also an accompanying smartphone app that lets users access and run a digital prepaid wallet in the cloud. The ring is certified and powered by Indian payment network RuPay. The PPI (or prepaid payment instrument) wallet is provided by LivQuik, a Mumbai-based payment solutions company.

There are currently two transaction limits if you use the 7 Ring: When you first activate the ring, you are registered as a "Min KYC customer", with a monthly transaction limit of 10,000. After completing a video KYC via the mobile app, your account gets upgraded to "Full KYC", with the monthly transaction limit at 2 lakh, Khubchandani explains.