Tag: Android Pay

Мои русские друзья, это хороший день для вас!  Good news for those in Russia.  Android Pay has come to your country with 15 banks supporting it.  The tap-to-pay service has been rumored for weeks to be coming to the country but Google made it official on their Russian site today.  It’s good news for a country and good for Android Pay as it continues its slow march across the planet.

As for the banks supported, here is the rundown:

• Sberbank
• Alfa-Bank
• VTB24
• Russian Standard Bank
• Raiffeisen Bank
• Bank Otkritie
• Rocketbank
• Tochka
• Russian Agricultural Bank
• Yandex.Money
• B&N Bank
• Tinkoff
• Promsvyazbank
• Ak Bars Bank
• MTS Bank

While it certainly isn’t every bank in the country, key large banks within the country on on the list which means it will hit a large percentage of customers.

More news today regarding Android Pay.  In addition to adding banks here in the US, Google and PayPal have announced a new collaboration effort which will bring PayPal to Android Pay as a payment option.  The new effort was announced today and when it rolls out to users in the coming weeks, you will now have the option to link your account to Android Pay as a payment option when you use the service at a retailer.

The announcement came from PayPal this morning and is a big win for people (like me) who use both services to pay for things both online and in retail locations.

Coming soon, consumers in the U.S. will be able to use PayPal in Android Pay at retailers from Walgreens to Dunkin’ Donuts. This partnership will enable our customers to pay across even more contexts, and will extend PayPal’s mobile leadership and reach as consumers become more comfortable shopping and buying on their mobile devices.

The new service isn’t available just yet.  According to the post from Google, you can expect it to come to both the PayPal and the Android pay app via updates in the coming weeks.

Google has announced that they have teamed up with several large banks globally to allow for adding your bank or credit card to Android Pay directly from your bank’s app.  Today, if you want to add your card to Android Pay, you have to add it to the app, then go through an approval process of some type (typically a SMS to your mobile) to actually add the card to Pay.  With this new way, while you are in your banking app, you can just tap a button to add the card to Android Pay.  It cuts down on the number of taps you have to make and certainly simplifies the process.

Today there are just a handful of banks that are supported:  Bank of America, Bank of New Zealand, Discover, mBank and USAA.  Google indicates in the announcement on this new collaboration with banks that more will be added in the future.

The growth of Android Pay continues at a torrid pace in 2017.  This weekend, another 13 banks were added to the service which pushes the total number of new banks added this year alone to over 100.  If you remember, 51 new financial institutions were added last month and given the heavy push that Google is making to get Android Pay used more and out there, the addition of so many banks big and small will help drive its adoption.

As with the additional banks last month, this month’s additions are generally smaller financial institutions.  Here is the rundown for this month’s additions:

• Bank of Stockton
• Boundary Waters Bank
• Citizens Bank of the South
• Country Bank for Savings
• Countryside Bank
• First Green Bank
• First State Bank of the Florida Keys
• Greenfield Cooperative Bank
• Infirmary Federal Credit Union
• Indiana University Credit Union
• Maquoketa State Bank
• McFarland State Bank
• The Conway National Bank

If you use one of these financial institutions, you should now be able to add your bank-backed credit or debit card to Android Pay.

The growth of Android Pay continues at an impressive clip with the tap-to-pay service adding an additional 31 banks and financial institutions.  Those additions brings the total number of banks supported to over 600.  For Google, it is pretty straightforward:  More banks mean more potential users of the service.  The good news is that a lot of the new additions are regional banks or Credit Unions.  That opens it up to more people who don’t necessarily live in large metro areas where the larger national banks have branches.

I’ve made the point in previous posts about new banks being supported that if you see an sticker at a retailer that they support Apple Pay, they support Android Pay too.  The technology between Apple Pay and Android Pay are identical so you can use either one (even if the clerk argues with you that they don’t accept it – which happened to me, which I proved them wrong with a tap of my Nexus 6P…. but I digress).  The exception to this is Samsung Pay which is a different technology and can be used at non-touch terminals.

Android Wear 2.0 is expected to be released today but it appears to Google is already paving the way for it with other apps.  Android Pay was updated late yesterday and with it comes support for Wear 2.0.  The support for it is not explicitly called out in the release notes for the update, something that Google is notoriously bad about updating on their apps.  Rather, it is in the screenshots that are associated with the update in the Play Store.

In those screenshots, you will see round Android Wear captures of a transaction with a Bank of America card along with another screenshot of a history of transactions.