Google have collaborated with mobile carriers, payment networks, banks and retailers to design Android Pay. Android Pay is a way to make payments using your Android smartphone with a tap in stores or online. It’s an open platform that Google wants to keep developing to deliver more choice and flexibility to users.
To use Android Pay, it’s as simple as unlocking your smartphone and placing it near the contactless terminal in a store, giving you transaction details and payment confirmation on the screen. It will connect with any store reward cards you may use automatically, which will mean fewer cards in your wallet.
Over 700,000 store locations around the US will be Android Pay enabled, along with over 1000 Android apps. A range of popular stores have signed up to Android Pay, including Coca-Cola, Best Buy, GameStop, Pepsi, Staples, Subway, Office Depot, McDonald’s and Jet Blue. Banking apps are to be linked to Android Pay, meaning that users will be able to activate Android Pay straight from the banking app itself.
Google will be keeping the details of your credit/debit card in the system, so you won’t have to input the information to make purchases. The store will be given virtual details of your card number rather than the actual details, which is a nice feature. Currently, it’s hard to know who and how many companies have credit/debit card details in their databases and what security is in place to keep the details safe. Something else added is the ability to lock your device, change the password or destroy the personal information stored on your phone from anywhere using the Android Device Manager.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OueObu2aA_M
Android Pay seems to want to make the wallet obsolete. What was once the content of a physical wallet will now be kept in the digital world on a device. One positive Google has done is focus on security, which is important. Trust is hard for technology to gain from users, but it’s probably more important than any other function. Without trust, users won’t use Android Pay, and Google has hit the ground running to gain trust by speaking about security with its Android Pay. Google wants the Android Pay to be able to be used from when the device is purchased, and has been working with AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon to make this possible. More announcements will be made in the coming months.
Source: Google
