Android Pay Coming to 10 New Markets; Adds Peer-to-Peer Payments

BY Rajesh Pandey

Published 18 May 2017

Google today announced that it is expanding Android Pay to 10 more countries, including Brazil, Canada, Russia, Spain, and Taiwan. In addition, the company is also bringing peer-to-peer payments to its mobile payment service.

Google also debuted a new Google Payment API that allows one to quickly pay for their purchases inside an app or mobile web through debit or credit cards saved to their Google account. This has nothing to do with Android Pay and will work on iOS, Android and the web.

As for peer-to-peer payments, Google is bringing it to the US later this year. Once enabled, the company says that one can say “OK Google, send $10 to Jane for pizza” to any device (i.e. their smartphone or Google Home) with Google Assistant and the money will automatically be deducted from their linked debit or credit card.

Google is also introducing a new Card Linked Offers API making it easier for merchants to target consumers with loyalty cards. For example, “MyPanera members who save their loyalty card to Android Pay can discover offers and learn about new menu items, surfaced by Android Pay when they are at the store.”

Finally, to make it easier to manage loyalty cards and programs by using its smart tap technology. Here’s how:

We’re also making it easier for Android Pay users to add loyalty programs. For example, Walgreens Balance Rewards® members who manually apply their loyalty account with a phone number and use Android Pay will receive a notification on their phone that easily enables them to link that loyalty card to Android Pay for future visits.

If you are a developer, make sure to head over to Google’s developer website for more information.

[Via Android Developers blog]