Google is no stranger to offering payment services, but its traditional offerings don’t work perfectly in developing regions. Today, the company has unveiled Tez, a new payment app for users in India that can transfer money between two users without any special hardware required.
Android Pay has been very slowly making its way around the world and today the service has finally arrived in Asia — or at least for those in Singapore. Users in Singapore are able to download and activate Android Pay on their devices right now as long as their bank is compatible with the service.
Update: Speaking to TechWeekEurope, Barclays has indicated it has no plans to support Android Pay in the UK. Instead, it would rather continue with its own apps for contactless payment.
“At this stage we are not planning on participating in Android Pay in the UK,” a spokesperson said. “In January this year we introduced a contactless mobile payment feature to the Barclaycard Android app that allows customers with an Android phone to make contactless payments for £30 and under, and at some retailers for up to £100.”
Recently it was rumored that Android Pay would finally land in the UK, and other international destinations, in March. With this month quickly running out of days, Google has officially announced that its mobile payments service will be launching at some point in the next few months. No specific date has been revealed, but, several banks are already onboard.
Quietly announced at last year’s I/O, Google is launching a pilot of its Hands Free payment system in the South Bay area of San Francisco. In the past, Square also experimented with a similar type of payment model that required limited user interaction. While Square’s attempt ultimately failed, Google’s scale and previous work with Android Pay might help.
Samsung has been aggressively pushing its mobile payment service that launched last August. With today’s addition of Wells Fargo, Samsung Pay now supports credit and debit cards from 70 banks and credit unions in the United States.
A report from ETNews in Korea suggests that LG’s mobile payments service will not be smartphone based. At least, not exclusively. A ‘White Card’ has leaked showing a digital credit-card sized device which will be able to store multiple credit/debit cards’ details and enable a user to pay from any account, using just the single LG Pay card. In essence, it’s LG’s version of the Coin card which launched on KickStarter a couple of years back.
As part of their so called “Samsung Galaxy Ecosystem,” Samsung Pay is expanding to Australia, Singapore, and Brazil over the coming year. The mobile payment service launched in the US last September to a crowded field of Apple and Android Pay.
While Google has shifted its focus to Android Pay for contactless payments, Google Wallet has needed to reinvent itself somewhat as a peer-to-peer payment system. With the latest update, it’s become a whole lot easier to send money to your friends, family and contacts.
From today, the updated app on both iOS and Android will let you send money to anyone on your contact list, even if you don’t have their email address. You can send money to them using their phone number, and it’s secure and fast.
Google has been heavily marketing Android Pay and encouraging users to set it up on their phones with various offers. In the spirit of holiday giving, every time you use Android Pay, from today until the end of December, Google.org will donate $1 to special needs education.
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The mobile payments industry is getting more crowded by the month. Early this morning, LG confirmed on its Facebook page that it will be entering the market with LG Pay, and has signed up a couple of Korean partners to do so. The company has joined forces with Shinhan Card and KB Kookmin Card in its home country, but didn’t say when the service is going live, or when it’ll expand to international markets.
The service will work on most LG phones, new or old. Although the company has been light on detail, we’re assuming that means those with built in NFC. Although, conceivably, it could be like Samsung Pay in that it works with both contactless NFC card readers as well as traditional Magstrip ones. Like Samsung and Apple, the service will only work on its own devices and isn’t cross-platform or cross-manufacturer.
Although we’re not surprised that LG has decided to follow in the example of Sammy, it’s still bemusing that any Android OEM should seek to release their own payment system when Android Pay is already here and will eventually work on most devices as long as they have an NFC antenna.
We’re skeptical of LG’s chances of success in a crowded market, but you can be sure that — in the future — LG’s mobile payment app will become yet another piece of bloatware to add to an already bursting collection of unnecessary duplicate apps and services.
One of Samsung’s mobile execs has hinted that the company is planning to expand Samsung Pay to cheaper handsets eventually, according to a report by Korea Herald. Shin Jong-Kyun responded “it will gradually expand” when asked specifically if it would move the payment technology to budget handsets at some point.
At launch, Samsung Pay will only be available on the newest flagship phones. The company opened up its beta program to US consumers a couple of weeks back, and is expected to officially launch the payment service at the end of this month.
Samsung Pay is Sammy’s attempt to compete with the likes of Android Pay and Apple Pay in the mobile contactless payment market. The one thing it has on both those platforms, however, is that you can use it virtually anywhere that has a magnetic card strip readers, rather than being limited to just NFC payments like Google’s and Apple’s systems. Its biggest restriction is handset support. Once it’s officially live, Samsung Pay will only work on the Galaxy Note 5, S6 Edge plus, S6 and S6 Edge. For a company with the product portfolio Samsung has, that’s restrictive to say the least, especially if it wants Samsung Pay to become widely adopted and used frequently.
Samsung Pay in action (via <a href="http://www.engadget.com" target="_blank">Engadget</a>)
In addition to announcing new Galaxy S6 edge+ and Galaxy Note5 smartphones today at its event, the South Korean handset maker has announced the official launch date for its mobile payment service called Samsung Pay. Samsung Pay was first demoed at an event in March and works differently than Google’s OS-level Android Pay as it uses Magnetic Secure Transmission technology based on its LoopPay acquisition that makes it widely compatible with point-of-sale terminals.
Starting a week from today, Samsung Pay will go live for the first time in South Korea enabling mobile payments from compatible Samsung devices. Following the initial rollout, Samsung Pay will go live in the United States starting September 28th.
In addition to launching in South Korea and the United States, Samsung says it’s targeting the UK, Spain, and China as the next markets to launch its mobile payment service. The mobile payment service was initially expected to go live earlier this summer.
As for availability, Samsung Pay is “preloaded on select Galaxy S6 edge+ and Galaxy Note5 devices” while a software update coming this month will add support on Galaxy S6 and S6 edge phones. Additionally, Samsung says it will launch a limited beta for Galaxy S6, S6 edge, S6 edge+ and Note5 phones starting August 25th. Full press release below:
Samsung Pay, the manufacturer’s contactless mobile payment service, is rolling out in Europe soon thanks to a partnership with MasterCard in the EU. Once the service launches officially, card issuers will be able to enroll in MasterCard’s Digital Enablement Services (MDES), and apply the capability to all kinds of MasterCard credit, debit, prepaid credit and small business cards.
What makes Samsung Pay a different to most mobile payment services is that it works with both Magstrip and NFC POS terminals, meaning you will be able to pay virtually anywhere that has a card machine.
The newly-announced Android Pay is pretty cool – it allows you to pay at retail stores and inside mobile apps without having to take out your wallet or punch a bunch of card details into your glass-screened phone. But the logical conclusion to reducing the friction of paying for things is not tapping my phone against an NFC reader, but rather just not having to take out my phone at all! Well, without the same fanfare that was given to Android Pay, Google said they’ll have a solution for just that.
As Apple took the mobile payments market by storm last year with the introduction and hard push of Apple Pay into retailers, Google has started looking beyond its Google Wallet offering to provide new ways for people to pay for things with their Android phones.
Google is currently recruiting Wallet users with payouts and you can now throw deals in the mix as well. The company recently announced its new “Buy with Google” promotion, which offers discounts from a group of retailers including: B and H, Beautylish, CheapTicket, EAT24, Expedia, Fancy, JackThreads, LivingSocial, Newegg, Pose, Rue La La, Vinted USA, Sidecar Ride and Wish.
The popular fine dining restaurant chain Taco Bell has blacked out its Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as its website today to draw full attention to its new Android app. Why? Because you can finally order your Nacho Cheese Doritos® Chips Taco Supreme® right from your Android phone and pay in the app.
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McDonald’s announced on Tuesday that it now accepts Softcard for NFC-based mobile payments on Android at its restaurants across the United States. The move comes just over a week after McDonald’s became one of the more high-profile launch partners for Apple Pay, which enables iPhone users to tap and pay with their smartphone.
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Today, Square announced a new version of its popular mobile payment system that will support EMV chipped credit cards. EMV is a joint effort from MasterCard and Visa to help improve security credit and debit card transactions and is set to become a standard in the US by October 2015. In addition to EMV-equipped credit cards, the new version of Square’s payment system will still feature support for legacy magnetic strips, so customers will still have the option to swipe and sign.
