At the end of last week, we heard rumors suggesting that Google is planning a new payment API named Android Pay, which has now been confirmed today at MWC by Google’s own Sundai Pichar. With Samsung also entering the mobile payment game, the pressure is on Google to finally make its mobile payment system universally useful.
Google intends for Android Pay to become its standard for mobile payments, with the API allowing for other parties to take Android Pay and integrate it into their own services and apps. Essentially, Android Pay will be the backbone behind transactions and software, meaning that it can continue to work with Google Wallet too.
As you may expect, Android Pay makes use of your phone’s NFC connection to transfer payments and will eventually support biometric security measures to act as confirmation as well. Speaking about security, Android Pay also implements tokenized card numbers, to prevent stolen data from causing a problem, and card data is stored locally on your device, meaning that you can use it without a network connection and there’s little risk of someone intercepting vital data over the air.
Android Pay doesn’t have a scheduled rollout plan just yet, but the latest report suggests that Google will be unveiling additional details at its I/O conference in May.