could the Garmin Pay NFC sensor be made to read RFID tags (for shoe selection, etc)

I'm not sure if the F6/F7 has any RFID sensor. I mean, maybe it has, I have no knowledge about that, but an RFID sensor is not required for garmin pay to work. Garmin pay works the opposite way, i.e. the sensor is in the payment terminal, and the watch contains only and RFID chip (tag?) that is read by the sensor in the terminal.

"Another noteworthy point is that NFC devices can act as either a reader or tag. This bidirectional capability allows you to use one piece of hardware — such as your smartphone — for all kinds of different applications" from www.androidauthority.com/.../

flocsy🤠 said:

Another noteworthy point is that NFC devices can act as either a reader or tag

But are we sure that a garmin watch is actually an NFC device? Surely, a an adidas shoe from OP's example or a contactles payment card is not capable of reading other NFC tags, so perhaps it's similar with a garmin watch. Again, I'm just speculating. It's quite possible that a garmin watch is a fully capable bidirectional NFC device.

Garmins NFC functions are not open in the API. As long as Garmin does not decide to change that (or add additional NFC features to their firmware) it will only work for Garmin Pay.

I would love to copy some member cards to the watch if they ever decide to open that.

Your idea with gear is also interesting, it could select your gear and prestart the fitting activity after reading the tag.

You can have 2 credit cards added to Garmin Pay and every time you pay you have to choose which card to use, so clearly there must be a way the watch can communicate that to the reader

What's really neat is FIT files can have data added later via what they call "chaining" without interfering with the original recording in the slightest.

Virtually all website that allow FIT uploads support the addition because it's part of the FIT specification.

So gear could be tagged onto FIT files at any point later, even if this NFC RFID idea doesn't take off.

In theory Garmin could allow gear/shoe/bike selection to be added to an activity afterwards via menu selection if gear list was stored on the watch.

It's the same way that the HRM-TRI/PRO downloads and appends HR data to an activity afterwards.

But even without Garmin's support someone could make a website like FitFileTools to add it to your FIT file, of course that is more effort required than most will want to do.

You can already edit gears: go to GCM, open the activity, top-right corner ..., edit gears.

But I wuld be interested how could I edit a fit file. My datafield records HR from a strap via ANT. It's not my HR, it's one of my son's. Sometimes I forget to edit the Settings before we start, so the other son's name is recorded. It's a string field in the fit file. If you know any website that could edit it let me know.

In fact, Garmin offers their customers in Chinese mainland features including virtual cards for public transportation and duplicate access cards, but I'm not sure if it's only hardware exclusive to the Chinese mainland version, as it sells for up to $1500 in China