Today at its I/O developer conference, Google announced a new payment solution for Android dubbed as Android Pay. It opens a new way to pay with your Android phone.
To make Android Pay successful, Google has already partnered with U.S. cellular carriers: AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. There carriers will pre-install Android in their devices running on Android 4.4 kitkat or higher with NFC.
Google also showcased the name of those retailers who will support Google’s new Android Pay mobile payment service. For selected retailers, Android Pay will apply offer reward points at checkout. Android Pay will also support fingerprint scanning technology on Android M. With this, users will be able to pay just by their fingerprint scanning. This is very similar to what we saw in Apple Pay which also allows authentication using its Touch ID technology.
With Android Pay, you will only need to put your smartphone near a merchant’s contactless terminal, that is it. Android Pay will do all heavy lifting. You do not need to open the merchant’s app for this. Just tap and done. If you have reward points, it will automatically be applied at the time of checkout.
With Android Pay, Google want to jump in mobile wallet technology before Apple Pay becomes popular. Mobile payment market is of around $67 billion and is expected to cross $142 billion by 2019.
Initially, it will be launched in United states in coming months.
