Android Pay is finally operational
Android Pay begins operations in US, gradually rolling out the NFC payment option to other countries.
Android Pay. Because money isn't falling out of our bank accounts as quickly as it should be.
Starting today, Android smartphone users will have access to Android Pay – the Android equivalent of NFC payment via your smartphone. The news was announced on the official blog for Android.
In a nutshell, Android Pay is really Google’s mobile equivalent of Apple Pay. The only difference is, Apple Pay is currently integrated with Touch ID, and that it only works with iPhones that have NFC (so basically, iPhone 5S and older don’t get to do NFC payment). Tap the phone on the NFC payment reader (which is available only for certain retailers) and choose the pay method you want – be it credit, debit, or even your cashless wallet for certain merchants (and that depends on whether Android or Apple has any partnership with these wallets).
One big plus point to using the cardless and cashless NFC mobile payment is security between the paying party and the merchant, since both Android Pay and Apple Pay doesn’t release your card details to the merchants you shop at.
If you are an app developer who wants to add Android Pay support to your app, here’s the Android Pay API site for developers.
Android Pay is currently available only in the US, with Australia getting the functionality in the first half of 2016. More countries will get to use Android Pay as 2016 goes by, and Google is currently working with various financial institutions to bring various payment options on-board the pay-by-NFC service. On the other hand, Apple Pay has concrete plans to come to Singapore by 2016.
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