Google's payment platform and mobile wallet for Android devices will soon be available in the UK. http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/23/an...gles-first-market-in-europe-in-coming-months/ Last year Google announced the launch of Android pay in Australia but almost four months later, it's yet to go live. I wonder if the UK has to wait that long.
I was confused because Google wallet has been available on Android for a while now, but the main difference is that Google Wallet requires the app, whereas Android Pay is built into the Operating system of the phone, so no app is necessary. Wallet will remain as a P2P money transfer system like Paypal, Android Pay is just a tap to pay service like Apple Pay.
I suspect we won't. With ApplePay already live and many banks offering the same function or similar functions through digital wallets, they can't really risk being left behind whether they are linked to the OS or not. In this case Google is not a market leader, but a follower into a growing but established market. London Transport using it is interesting, as the buses all switched to card-only last year (something of a debacle giving the double billing and card collision issues), and there have been rumours that they want to move away from their current Oyster system to a purely card-based system so they don't have to pay the Oyster transaction fee. If AndroidPay can be used by 13-16 year olds, this could be another step towards that goal, since children without credit cards may still have smartphones.
To be honest I expected this to be available a lot sooner than it will be so the fact it's now been officially announced as its coming, comes as no surprise. While I'm sure it will prove popular, I'm not sure that everyone will be ditching their other online transaction processors in favour of this, but I guess only time will tell.
Too many different pay systems requiring particular bank credit cards from certain banks make pay by phone a pain in a portion of my anatomy. The few businesses we deal with have different systems. Nevertheless I was going to give Google's thing a whirl to be used when traveling, and that dissolved into an incredulous painful hour-long discussion with a rep about a billing address. Google wants a residence address for a credit check and postal mail delivery, not a post office box; the rep couldn't understand that neither was possible in our case. Samsung Pay wanted me to sign up for cards from banks I don't want anything to do with. I don't want or need 8 or 10 credit cards. At least for us, cash and a gold card from the brokerage firm and two credit cards (we've had for more than 3 decades) is the way to go.
