About

Neos is addressing the global market by offering a redesigned payment experience. We provide payment-enabled jewellery, wearables and accessories that offer a fast, secure, seamless, contactless experience and integrate qualities like fashion, elegance and personal taste. Neos creates fashionable, easy-to-use, battery-free and stand-alone payment instruments by combining jewellery-making with edge technologies. Beyond payments, Neos creations have many other NFC-based usages in access control, public transportation, loyalty management, digital identification or secure authentication.
Developing more different designs to address the diverse needs and styles of men and women for other age groups and following the fashion industry trends are among our priorities. Neos is a pioneer in making payment-enabled jewellery with metal (e.g. silver or stainless steel) frames and parts. Besides that, we focus too on the payment activation process, which must be fast, secure and smooth. Using a smartphone app takes no more than two minutes and four simple steps to connect a Neos wearable with an existing payment card and start using it right after. Neos available products are approved by Mastercard.
In Neos, we strongly believe in a cashless society vision and work passionately to make the payment process as easy as it gets.

Solution & Product

Neos' solution is making jewellery and fashion accessories that consumers like to wear beyond their function. Similar products are missing because of the gap between the tech and fashion industries or jewellery makers.
More so, a recent Mastercard survey shows that 175 million European consumers are willing to use wearables, such as bracelets and rings, for their daily payments. Neos aims to build a strong position in that emerging European market segment, like a pioneer in designing and making popular and bespoke products.
Millennials, Gen Z and women are the primary target customer groups, but not only. Neos customer is anyone looking for a secure, fast and easy way to make everyday payments. With cash in decline, contactless payments are becoming the new norm (and hygienic alternative) worldwide.
Apart from that, Neos addresses the B2B market. Banks, big retailers, hotels, transportation system operators and car manufacturers are among our prospects. Any NFC passive wearable could be used for access control (e.g., a hotel room or a car), as an identifier to loyalty schemes or even as a two-factor authentication element beyond payments.

Innovation & Scalability

After a long period of continuing R&D, Neos was the first to embed a custom-designed NFC module into a metal frame or a tube with metal edges and managed to make working MVPs. A ‘friends and family’ launch followed, with exceptionally successful results and positive feedback from early-period users. Functional samples were tested successfully in the UK, Greece and the Nordics. Nowadays, Neos wearables are available on neospay.com and support payment cards issued by banks in 13 European countries: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Belgium, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and Poland. They can also be connected with Curve digital wallet throughout Europe. Neos products have been recognized worldwide for bringing innovation to the e-payments industry. StartUs insights placed Neos among the 5 top wearables startups to watch in 2022.
The market for payment-enabled wearable devices will reach US$7.2bn in 2024, “driven by a surge in contactless payment adoption, as a result of growing usage of contactless cards and near field communication (NFC)-enabled mobile payments,” ABI Research predicts. According to Mastercard, fashion brands drive the next evolution as wearable technology matures, creating wearables that are now high-end accessories rather than just functional.

Traction & achievements

MVPs were demonstrated almost three years ago during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in partnership with Visa. Then, working samples were tested for over a year in the UK, Greece and Nordics.
Today, Neos has an established partnership with Swedish firm Fidesmo, specialising in providing passive tokenisation services. On top of that, Neos Cocoon and Polygon bracelets have been approved by Mastercard. Discussions on partnerships with banks, card issuers, payment providers and local distributors are in progress in different countries.
Also, Neos participated as a vendor in the pilot program of using NFC wearables in the German public transportation system to push forward contactless transactions in the context of response measures to the Covid-19 pandemic. Additionally, Tesla drivers can securely connect their car keys and payment cards to a Neos wearable. Open the car door, start the car, pay for charging, buy a snack mid-journey, or pay for the weekly shopping with a piece of jewellery.

Team & Why Us

We are a well-experienced and result-oriented team that made it happen for the first time globally — a team familiar with the tech, jewellery and product design environment. And we firmly believe that investing in e-payment solutions is in the right direction in a world where cash is falling rapidly.
A combination of technology maturity, consumer popularity, familiarity with contactless payments, and the unique external phenomenon (and notably Covid-19, whereby contactless is being pushed as a safe and hygienic alternative to cash by the payment networks, merchants, government and the World Health Organization) is accelerating today’s market adoption of contactless technologies. Wearable devices are primed to take advantage of this trend, increasing choice and flexibility in form factors and available payment methods. But most importantly, wearable payment technology can quickly converge with other applications, such as loyalty and rewards, fitness and health, ticketing and transport, access control etc., offering new revenue streams and business opportunities for the various stakeholders.

Funding Needs

Building module-free designs are one of Neos’ priorities for facing upcoming competition in this emerging passive wearables market. That will help us change the form factor of passive payment-enabled jewellery and wearables and stay steps ahead of design flexibility. Module-free designing will give us a valuable IP.
At the same time, we want to expand Neos’ footprint in the markets where we have already started selling our products through marketing and promotional activities and establishing partnerships with local retailers and distributors. Business development also focuses on building B2B partnerships with banks and fashion brands.
To cover those needs and expand our product portfolio in new markets, we seek 550,000 Euro pre-money.