Android Pay by Google Revealed

Big news in mobile and payments worlds as Google rolled out a new iteration of its mobile payments mechanism.  Google Wallet had not taken off so this is a new effort, a new brand, a new approach to payments in Android devices.

Here is one story on the reveal:

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-pay-n366091

Here is a snippet from that piece:

Google fans scoffed when Apple unveiled its mobile payment service Apple Pay to great fanfare last fall, pointing out that Google Wallet has offered similar technology since 2011. But Google Wallet never really took off -- and now Google is largely replacing that service with the new "Android Pay."

Google unveiled the new service Thursday morning at its annual I/O developers' conference in San Francisco. Like Apple Pay -- and Google Wallet -- Android Pay works by using a near-field communication, or NFC, chip. Link a major credit card to Android Pay, wave the phone near a merchant's special NFC reader at a store checkout and confirm the purchase.

Re/Code has an excellent piece on the overall Android announcement that is a very good read.

http://recode.net/2015/05/28/google-launches-android-m-and-android-pay/

Here is a snippet from that piece:

Android Pay, Google’s competitor to Apple’s mobile payment offering, is here. As is a revamped version of Google Wallet: The product, which has struggled to catch on since its 2011 debut, is converting to a peer-to-peer payment service, facing off against Facebook’s Messenger and apps like Venmo.

Pichai briefly teased Android Pay in March. Basically, it’s an app and application layer with three basic functions. First, like Apple Pay, it allows users to buy at NFC terminals. Second, users can make purchases within apps with a single tap; Google is integrating loyalty offers into this feature, courtesy of its recent acquisition of the technology from Softcard, the carrier-backed mobile wallet.

Happy Reading,

J.W. Gant