National Australia Bank have now made Google Pay available to their customers, becoming the last of the Australian Big 4 banks to do so, and joining a long list of banks that have already enabled the Android platform’s preferred payment service.
NAB took to Twitter earlier this evening to announce the switch:
No wallet? Introducing a new way to pay in store or online with NAB and Google Pay™. More info at https://t.co/T1mh1CPe11 pic.twitter.com/G4njkmTNHT
— NAB (@NAB) April 11, 2018
For users who are new to Google Pay (or those who have been sitting frustrated on the sidelines for so long waiting for it) the process to add your NAB cards to Google Pay is pretty straight forward:
- If you haven’t already, install Google Pay via the Google Play Store.
- Add your eligible NAB Visa card.
- Use the SMS verification method to prove that the card is actually yours.
You can then use Google Pay at just about any Tap’n’Pay terminal, and trust me, they’re virtually everywhere these days – so much so that for many purposes, you can basically get away without carrying a wallet.
Unfortunately, the change for NAB might have come just a bit late – personally, I made the switch to ANZ a couple of years ago to get access to Android Pay (as it then was), and there’s no way I’ll be switching back to NAB now. I know many others who also moved their banking away to access more advanced payment services (including Android Pay) who, too, may be reluctant to move back.
For those who’ve stuck with NAB, though, your patience has been rewarded with our own Daniel Tyson confirming that his NAB cards now work in Google Play.
Ok St. George, your move!
Hopefully, they will just forget trying to update (and fix) their own tap and pay service which is only limited to Samsung devices anyway and make it available on Samsung/ Google pay, hopefully in the next six months….
St George? Where the hell are you?
Silly question, as a NAB customer who pays with his phone all the time, what’s the benefit of switching to the Google app? What does it do that the NAB app doesn’t?
I agree. I’m a NAB customer and pay with my phone all the time using their own app, I’m not sure what benefit I get from using Google Pay?
For those who do all their banking with NAB, Google Pay doesn’t seem to do anything more than NAB Pay already does. In my situation, Google Pay means I can use only one mobile payment for all my cards, NAB, ING, AmEx…
About time!
I got a homeloan with them so was reluctant to refinance just for android pay but also opened ING Orange acct to use it (and did all my banking through them)
I may consider moving business back to NAB now, what a pita that they took so long to get onboard
It’s only personal cards as of now which is a major bummer. Something makes me believe they have their business customers on a old platform and their consumer customers on a newer one (which seems to be getting all the new features). Take making Payid payments for example, still not available for business accounts. Its always a bit half assed with NAB.
Am rather surprised. I figured given their own app they’d not feel the pressure to, unlike over on the Apple side.
But yeah…their delaying got me to open an account elsewhere…for me that was ING. I haven’t closed my NAB accounts though.