Tag: Android Pay

Google Pay, the rebranded merging of Google Wallet and Android Pay, is going live today.  With a new app rolling out and a rebranding of another… wait, I thought there was only going to be one app?  Yeah… we’ll get there.

First, Google Pay is the rebranding of Android Pay and that app is going live in the Play Store today according to the company’s blog.  If you have Android Pay installed on your phone, you will get an OTA update to the new app over the course of the next few days.  Regardless of which one you have installed right now, you can still go and use it.  This, to an extent, is a rebranding exercise at this point.

Today at CES, Google announced that they are merging Android Pay and Google Wallet into a new app & service, Google Pay.  Google Pay will be the one-stop solution for making purchases online, at retailers, and through in-app purchases such as those found in Airbnb and Fandango.

The new solution has been in the works for the past year according to the Mountain View company and it will not only allow for you to make purchases but to also send funds to friends & family.  That’s the Google Wallet part of the equation for those who don’t recall.

Android Pay continues its global expansion this week with the tap-to-pay service launching both in the Czech Republic and Brazil.  The addition of these two countries comes on the heels of the service’s expansion into Ukraine last week.  Now Android users in these two countries will be able to use their phones to pay for goods & services where it is accepted.

In the Czech Republic, over 144,000 locations now accept Android Pay including retailers like Billa, McDonald’s, Lidl and Penny Market.  For Brazil, that country becomes the first Latin America country to have the service available.  It too is available through a wide range of retailers and is available for customers of Banco do Brasil and Caixa.

Another week, another crop of Android Pay supporting banks.  Seriously, with over 1,000 banks now supported in the US so we are getting to the point where it is more of a question of which banks don’t support the tap-to-pay service than those that do.

As you would expect, most of the new additions today are small, regional banks and credit unions.  The list includes:

• 1st Northern California CU
• Adirondack Regional Federal Credit Union
• Bankwell Bank
• Central Alliance Credit Union
• Coastal Heritage Bank
• Cumberland Valley National Bank
• Greenfield Savings Bank
• Home National Bank
• Sauk Valley Bank and Trust
• Sicily Island State Bank
• UnitedOne Credit Union

If you bank at one of these institutions, you can now add your bank card to Android Pay and use it where the service is accepted.

Probably more interesting in this update however is the support for Synchrony private label credit cards – well some of them at least.  Synchrony is the company behind many department store cards as well as online cards like Gap, Banana Republic and Nissan Visa card.

Android Pay support has been increased yet again, the second time this month, with the addition of 34 financial institutions today.  That brings the total number of banks, credit unions and other financial houses up to nearly 1,100 supported here in the United States.

As has been the case for most of 2017, the new financial institutions tend to be more on the regional or local bank side but there is a big name in this round, Charles Schwab Bank.  This was one of the last big-bank holdouts in supporting the tap-to-pay service.

It has literally been a year since it was announced but Visa Checkout integration into Android Pay is finally starting to roll out to users.  Back in October 2016, Google and Visa announced that Visa Checkout and Masterpass would be coming to the tap-to-pay app for purchases online.  At the time, it was indicated that the integration would happen in early 2017 but it has taken until October of this year to happen.

Better late than never I suppose.

With the integration, Android Pay users can pay on hundreds of thousands of new sites where Visa Checkout or Masterpass are accepted using their preferred device authentication method – like fingerprint recognition. No longer will users have to remember multiple usernames and passwords in order to checkout, saving them time and hassle.