Good news for anyone in the US whose bank still hasn’t enabled Android Pay support, with PayPal announced as the latest payments partner for Google’s contactless payment system.
Over the next couple of weeks, Android Pay users in the US will be able to add their PayPal details to Android Pay and start tapping and paying using that account. Of course this means of payment opens up Android Pay to a whole subset of eager users who’ve so far been stymied by their banks refusal to add support for Android Pay.
Google and PayPal have worked together for a fair while, with Google adding PayPal as a payment option to Google Play almost three years ago.
Android Pay can be used in three major ways, at any NFC enabled terminal, as well as in supported apps and websites. PayPal has become an almost ubiquitous payments solution for many people since they launched, with the company processing $102 billion in mobile payment and two billion mobile payment transactions last year alone.
At this stage, it’s definitely US only for this feature. We’re hopeful that it will come to Australia, but we’ll have to wait for that announcement.
I was just thinking the other day that this would be very useful. It seems many banks are happy to use their own apps and aren’t really signing up for any of the Samsung, Apple or Android Pay systems. I guess it really comes down to Visa and MasterCard Austalia signing on and putting pressure on the stubborn banks to keep up to date. I’d swap PayWave for Android Pay any day. At least you can turn off the NFC on your phone for those worried about skimmers.
NAB, CBA etc would just love that.
Using PayPal via Android Pay would be brilliant, as it would completely eliminate the need for my bank (which so far has shown no signs of adopting Android Pay) to do anything. Here’s hoping it rolls out beyond the US soon.