Starting September 10, Google began the Android Pay Rollout in over 1 million locations across the US. The mobile payment solution is usable everywhere tap and pay payments are accepted.
The mobile payment service works with all NFC-enabled Android devices running Android 4.4 Kitkat OS (or higher) and on any mobile carrier. It supports debit and credit cards from the four major payment networks in the US – American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa.
At the moment, cards issues by popular banks and credit unions like Bank of America, U.S Bank, USAA, American Express, PNC, Region Banks. Wells Fargo, Capital One and Citi are on the coming soon list and if you transact with other banks not on the list they could be added soon.
Android Pay is accessible in over 1 million locations in the US including Best Buy, Toys R US, Subway, McDonald’s, Macy’s , Walsgreen and more. Google says the payment solution doesn’t store users financial and personal information, it instead uses industry standard tokenization features.
With tokenization, a unique serial number is ascribed to every transaction which would appear instead of the user’s credit or debit card details. A PIN, Password or Pattern will be used to authorise transaction. Those with phones running Android 6.0 Marshmallow can authorise payment using the fingerprint authentication.
Asides payment cards, Android Pay also support some Gift cards and Loyalty cards. New users can download and install the Android Pay app from the usual Google Play Store and those who have the old Google Wallet app can update it to the Android Pay app.
New Android smartphones from AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon running Android 4.4 (or higher) will have the app pre-installed on it. The Android Pay Rollout will not be available to everyone at first as it is being slowly rolled out. More features, banks, and store locations would be added over the coming months.
Android Pay’s rivals in the US includes the already available Apple Pay from … you guessed right … Apple and Samsung Pay which is expected to launch in the US on September 28th.
Samsung Pay has more chances of being accepted especially in cases where there are no NFC Based POS system thanks to its magnetic based swiping (MST) technology.
Source: Google
