Google has announced a rival mobile payment service to Samsung Pay and Apple Pay called Android Pay. The new service will take up where Google Wallet left off. The tekkies will know that Google Wallet shut down as of this month, discontinuing its role as a payment gateway. It will continue to exist, but will integrate Android Pay as a payment source.
Android Pay will allow users to pay for goods and services using their Android smartphone.
To guard against fraud, each transaction will generate a single-use “token” that is sent to the receiving device. Android Pay will use near-field communication (NFC) initially, but will be able to take advantage of biometric devices such as fingerprint scanners at a later date. Credit card data will be stored locally so that payments can be conducted without a data connection on the smartphone. Yaaay!
Right now, the service targets developers, hoping to interest them in building directly into their apps. Android Pay will not exist as a standalone app, but will be used by third-party apps to create payment products such as store- or payment provider-specific apps, acting as a payment source as well as a credit card replacement.
The idea is to build the service in a way “that anybody else can build a payments service on top of Android,” said Sundar Pichai, Google’s senior vice-president of product, at the Mobile World Congress. “In places like China and Africa, we hope that people will use Android Pay to build innovative services.”
