A new program from Fitbit, UnitedHealthcare and Qualcomm will reward users with up to $1,500 in health-care credits for activities completed on their Fitbit Charge 2 devices, Fitbit co-founder and CEO James Park told CNBC on Thursday.
The UnitedHealthcare wellness program, called Motion, is powered by QualcommLife's 2net remote care cloud-based platform. With it, users can earn up to $4 a day in credits for reaching fitness goals tracked by their Fitbits.
Appearing on "Fast Money Halftime Report," Park called the program "incredible" and spoke to the challenge Fitbit faced when trying to partner with health-care insurers.
"We've worked closely with employers, but the insurance industry has taken a while because there [are] a lot of dollars at stake, so they've [done] very thorough research [and] a lot of internal studies that validate that using wearables can actually result in health-care savings," he said.
With UnitedHealthcare, what tipped the scales in Fitbit's favor over competitors like Garmin was the company's long lifespan in the wearables industry, Park said.
"The other thing that we're bringing to the table is 10 years of experience in this category. We have shipped over 50 million devices," Park said. "So [if] you think about the hundreds of millions of covered lives, a company like United Healthcare really needs a partner that's proven in this category, so that's where we come in."