Google Is Launching a Secure Payment Platform Called Android Pay

The fascination of being able to make payments with one’s device rather than a plastic card is on the rise. First Apple, then Samsung and now Google is ready to foray into that world of mobile payments.

Google’s Senior Vice President of Product, Sundar Pichai, unveiled Google’s plans at MWC 2015 to put your credit and cards in your phone. It’s no surprise that the tech giant has decided to call it Android Pay.

Needless to say, the service will empower users to make payments with their Android smartphones for any goods and services they receive. In order to prevent fraud, a one-time use token is generated and sent to the receiving device. Since the card data is locally stored, a cellular connection won’t be necessary to use Android Pay. These are common practice with Visa, American Express and MasterCard.

It has been planned to work using the NFC technology which is slowly but surely becoming part of many Android devices of late. Support for biometric security like fingerprint scanning is also planned as a long term solution. It’s an interesting decision by Google to develop this not as an app but as base software (API) which allows developers and other manufacturers to embed Android Pay within their own apps.

Sundar went on to state that the introduction of Android Pay would not mean the end of Google Wallet; it would do quite the contrary. The two systems are distinct in the way they function so the Android Pay could only complement the already established Google Wallet. Google acknowledges that Google Wallet is a popular choice among Android users and is the primary mode of payments on the Play Store.

While Samsung might be working on its own mobile payments solution, Google wishes to work in close coordination with the company to see how the two can align. There is no word on the date when Android Pay becomes available to Android users but it’s only fair to expect Google to reveal more on the matter in May at the Google I/O.