Cheapest tap-to-pay watches in South Africa

South Africans who don’t want to take out their wallets or smartphones when shopping can buy watches with contactless payment capability from R1,900.

There are two requirements for a watch to make tap payments.

Firstly, it must have an embedded Near-Field Communication (NFC) chip, which enables secure, short-range, wireless communication between your device and a payment terminal.

Secondly, it must be able to run a digital wallet app supported by your bank so that you can load your card securely onto the device.

Digital wallets for smart device payments supported in South Africa include Apple Pay, Fitbit Pay, Garmin Pay, Google Wallet, Samsung Wallet, and SwatchPay.

We compiled a list of 10 of the cheapest wearables you can buy in South Africa for under R5,000 in March 2024.

The most affordable tap-to-pay wearables in South Africa are not smartwatches.

Swatch offers a wide range of conventional analogue watches with embedded NFC chips and support for its digital wallet software called SwatchPay.

This is supported by Al Baraka Bank, Discovery Bank, FNB, and RMB in South Africa.

Linking your card to the watch is done with the SwatchPay mobile app on your smartphone.

The cheapest SwatchPay models in South Africa are priced at R1,900. More eccentric and larger designs go up to R3,920.

Swatch Neon to the Max watch with SwatchPay

Fitbit’s fitness bands with Fitbit Pay were previously the most affordable tap-to-pay smart wearables in South Africa.

However, Fitbit owner Google pulled the company from the South African market in November 2023.

There are now only a handful of Fitbit devices available to buy in the country, many of which are more expensive parallel imports.

Even with those hiked prices, Fitbit offers the widest range of tap-to-pay smart wearables under R5,000.

Samsung had the most smartwatches with contactless payment support under the same price point.

Its most affordable option is the Galaxy Watch Active 2, although for a R100 more, interested buyers can get a much newer and more capable Galaxy Watch4.

For Garmin fans, we could only find one smartwatch with tap-to-pay below R5,000 — the Venu SQ Music Edition.

Apple did not offer any smartwatches under R5,000, while Garmin’s Venu SQ Music Edition was the sole tap-to-pay option under R5,000 from the fitness and adventure-focused brand.

Below are 10 of the most affordable watches you can buy in South Africa with support for tap-to-pay.