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Google Pay app for Android

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37 pointsbdcravens47 comments

In Europe, the availability of contactless payment has been growing like crazy. I live in Eeastern-Europe and even here I can pay contactless almost everywhere. And with almost everywhere, I really mean almost everywhere. Even really tiny stores tucked away in a corner that didn't even support card payment at all until contactless was on the rise. And with contactless, I mean, you just tap your card on a reader and that's it. I am not really sure why I would want to do this with my phone. I'd have to take it out of my pocket, unlock it to approve the transactions etc. Instead I just put my card on a read for half a second and I can walk away.

In my home country (Western-Europe), some supermarket chains even support complete self-checkout. You just grab what you need, scan your items with a handheld scanner and then pay contactless at one of the payment terminals and then you're good to go.

Can somebody explain why I'd prefer using my phone over this system?

If your phone has a fingerprint reader, I find that it's even easier to pull out the phone and tap, than to try and get a card out of your wallet.

Plus, feels more secure since you need to authenticate, vs anyone with your card can just tap it. (sure, usually you are not liable if you report lost credit card quickly)

What I'd really like to see next is for proper electronic receipts to be transferred to the phone, vs just the transaction total.

So that you don't have to carry all of your credits cards everywhere. Credit Card rewards are much better in US than in Europe and it makes sense to use certain credit card to make certain kind of transaction. e.g. one of my card given 3% cashback at restaurants but only 1% at grocery stores. While other gives 2% at grocery stores.

Plus, if you lose your card/wallet it is a pain to change numbers everywhere. While you don't need to do that if you lose your phone as real card numbers are not stored in the pay apps. Besides whoever finds the phone needs to go pass your lock screen to get anywhere near that.

In Europe not only credit cards are contactless, but also debit cards. Furthermore, in some countries you have to carry an ID at all times, so you would have your wallet with you anyways.

Regarding safety: contactless only works for rather small sums. Anything above that requires a pin.

Indeed. I only use my credit card outside the EU.

As another comment here points out. People don't really use credit cards here. Everyone has a debit card which supports contactless payments without a pin up to €20. Which is enough for most use cases.

Even better, in the country where I live, almost all debit cards have a number and a Cv2 code. So you can pay online at any place that accepts credit cards.

Transactions are free and instant. Within a second of paying I can see the transaction in the mobile app of my bank. Hell, it sends notifications for every transaction if you want.

> Even better, in the country where I live, almost all debit cards have a number and a Cv2 code.

You don't have this in every country?

Not in my home country. All banks give out Maestro cards. While the country I live in right now gives out Visa Electron cards.

You would not.

But in the US paying with card is crazy "slow," especially with the new chip.

> in the US paying with card is crazy "slow," especially with the new chip.

Does anyone know why this is?

Chip cards have been widespread in Europe for over a decade (in some places they've been around over 20 years). As pleasantly convenient as the new tap cards are, I've never found chip to be slow as long as I can remember. Sometimes a wireless terminal will have momentary connection problems but this is rare enough to be acknowledged by the shop as a clear technical fault and apologies given for the delay.

IME this mostly depends on the terminal and/or how the store chooses to handle transactions. Some terminals see to first need to establish some kind of connection to a server during the transaction, which can fail or take time. Some seem always connected or they batch the transactions and perform them at some point in the future. (Could be that batching cannot be done anymore, though.)

E.g. at Aldi here (Southern Germany) paying with card including entering the PIN isn't really slower than paying cash (and the Aldi cashiers are crazy fast in handling cash). At other stores the card terminals seem awfully slow, though.

As far as I had assumed (don't have any in-depth knowledge though), all chip systems required a challenge response with a server, so this couldn't be batched I don't think.

I can imagine it being related to internet connection speed if it was a minor delay, but people seem to describe really significant delay, even in major US cities where you'd imagine that shouldn't be a problem.

I’m used to the dialup-style delays but these are longer and happen at places with new equipment and high transaction volume, and they seemed to be doing real-time transactions before because even the magstripe transactions would immediately trigger the push notification to my phone.

I’ve been assuming this is some new, unoptimized codepath kludged into a legacy system because it’s very common but doesn’t seem to affect new products – e.g. Square systems are always a fraction of a second.

The one part I can’t explain is why at the subset of places which support both NFC and chips, the NFC transactions are at least as fast as magstripe when the chip transactions are so much slower.

I once heard the conspiracy that that the large banks in America want to keep the magnetic stripe because it's easier to do credit card fraud that way. It cost millions for the bank, but keeps newcomers away from the market.

You also have to take your card out of your pocket, right? So, it's altogether not much different in terms of "experience", but the phone has a nicer UI.

That's the thing I was trying to say. The card doesn't have a UI. With the phone, the fingerprint or facial recognition might fail etc. With the card, it cannot go wrong, you just tap your card on the reader.

It might fail, but it probably won't. Also your card might pick up static and not interface with the terminal. Or you might break it by bending it in your pocket (happened to me a while back). You say there's no UI for cards, but that's only the case for transactions under €20. With phone, no PIN required for transactions over X dollars. One motion for everything.

Then add that you don't need to carry a wallet if you have phone payment. Throw your phone in a sleeve (or use a watch!) and go running, stop for your smoothie on the way home.

Finally, since it's a phone I can call it when it's missing or my watch will tell me if it's in the Uber I just got out of. Even works when intoxicated!

In Romania, a bank started issuing watches that function as contactless credit cards last year.

https://embeddedsecuritynews.com/2017/06/romanian-lender-int...

I live in Romania. I got one. It's been great!

I see your point. One thing I've seen people do is to keep their debit card in the cover of their phone. Which is a great hack :-) You can just put your phone on the card reader.

>Can somebody explain why I'd prefer using my phone over this system?

Your credit card number is never seen by the merchant. A lot of credit card thefts are done by employee's lifting the card number details during a transaction[1]. With Google Pay / Apple Pay the credit card number is replaced with a one time token that is only valid for that transaction.

[1]https://youtu.be/qgu2NVrfRV4?t=44s

In Europe we have chips and PIN on cards, most transactions are useless without them so you can't do much with just the card number.

Though some transactions on the internet can be done without them but that's rare and diminishing, and that probably not possible for the contactless cards

Because I have my phone in my hand quite a lot, but I don't have my credit card in my hand at all.

To use my credit card I'd have to get my wallet out, find the right card, drag it out of its slot, etc. To use my phone I reach into my pocket, grab the only phone-shaped thing in there, and while moving it towards the terminal put my thumb on the sensor. Takes far less time.

"It's identical to Android Pay in essentially every way, but it has a fancy new name!"

Of all these "$company_name Pay" services, the only one that ever offered anything unique was Samsung Pay with its ridiculous magnetic-card backwards compatibility system. I never used it, but from what I read it was apparently pretty neat, and allowed you to use the phone to pay on any legacy payment terminal.

I use Samsung Pay for some of the services. So I was surprised with that the post sounded like it has been discontinued. Though it seems the service isn't used that much in US.

"Samsung’s mobile payment platform is built upon a technology from a company called LoopPay, which was acquired by Samsung in 2015."

I haven't seen actual statistics, but with the MST (magnetic secure transaction?) capability, I'd guess that it was bigger than AndroidPay for point-of-sale.

I don't think it's going away since it's based on a different technology and is a separate app.

https://thedroidguy.com/2018/01/heck-difference-samsung-pay-...

I use Android Pay currently for everything here in Australia, it is just seamless! We have a fairly large uptake of contactless here by merchants so it is a good fit! The only thing they need to work out now is contactless ATMs working with it, then I can ditch my card for good!

I make heavy use of cardless cash via my bank's app when I need to visit an ATM. I haven't had my wallet with me for more than half an hour at a time this year.

I use the CommBank app for touch payments and I'm constantly surprised by how good uptake here in Oz is. I've barely touched cash or any other payment form in the last year+, and mixed use going back way further than that. Even if it's a coffee from a coffee cart at the markets, everyone here takes paypass. I regularly go out now with nothing except my phone (and license in pocket with phone if I'm driving), with no fear of getting stuck needing cash/card. It's so nice not carrying a wallet.

I can also go to ATMs using their Cardless Cash option in the app, which solves your other point.

Bank of America has NFC ATMs here in the Bay Area at least.

Why do they keep saying 'faster way to pay'... It's always slower for me to pull out the cell phone, unlock it, open Google Pay, choose the card, click/swipe/acknowledge/etc then wait for it to process. I'd rather pull out my wallet; toss out the cash.

It probably depends on your use case.. It's a lot easier for me. I don't need to pull out my wallet, look for which card it is out of many.. while my phone is nearly always in my hand at all times if I'm walking to a store or something

You're doing something wrong - though I don't know what. Mobile payments - I've used both Apple Pay and Android/Google Pay - are the best. I pull out my phone, unlock it with the fingerprint scanner on the way, hold it up to the reader and cha-ching, it chooses my default payment method and I'm done. I use it every chance I get.

The other option is fishing out my debit card with a chip, inserting it at the exact right time, wade through whatever menus, entering my pin, waiting for the handshake to complete and then the honk-honk-honk for me to remove my card.I

Just tonight I was at the movies and paid for our overflowing snacks and drinks with one hand. No wallet juggling needed. And no change.

What's even better is that in many stores like Walgreens, mobile payments seem to shortcut the various "do you want to donate" and "want to sign up for our discount card and mailing list" screens, which saves even more time.

Best technology ever. I feel like I'm living in the future every time I use it.

Well if you are bringing up choosing the card, you should also bring choosing the right bills in case of cash. Then the cashier needs to count it, and select the bills/coins to return, which then you need to figure where to put in your wallet.

Pulling out the cell phone and unlocking it usually one step for me. Also, I have credit card for groceries (as that's where I use NFC most often) set as the default, so I don't open Google Pay to choose the card.

You don't need to open the app or even unlock your phone. With Google/Android Pay, you only need to have the screen switched on. It can be on the lock screen and still work fine. You don't need to press a single confirmation on the screen.

For anyone who sees this and is as confused as I was, this is apparently true for small transactions. I've always had to unlock however, not sure what "small" means here.

From the docs (https://support.google.com/pay/answer/6289406?hl=en):

"To make most purchases, you need to unlock your phone. You won't need to unlock your phone for certain small payments."

Then I would have to take my wallet with me :(

Currently I use my contactless CC, just swipe it over the terminal and if the value is low enough I don't even have to enter a PIN.

Like Android-Android or Google Play Services-Android?

Why is it so hard for Google to stick to one name, why keep on changing names of different services. What are they trying to achieve?

Recognition of Google; android is too broad term these days, like PC.

This is an artifact of the Google promotion process: people are incentivized to switch projects and launch new things. Hence not continuous improvement, but relaunches.

Sooo, on a top of spying on us over mobiles amd internet, they also want to spy our financial transactions. I don't need any additional finance service, I was listening once some really old guy saying "the one who uses credit card doesn't value the money". And it was smart comment, with all the transaction details shared with data brokers (including google, microsoft, apple,...) maybe the "hard cash" is not a bad idea.

I see your point, but with cashless pay being so simple and effortless I doubt cash will be around for a long time.

It's almost gone in some Nordic Countries. I don't have to bring my wallet. Cash is a hassle for me.

I see Android Pay signs and stickers and logos all over he place. That’s a lot of branding to throw away and replace.

Don't worry, sending mixed messages about their services is part of Google's grand strategy.

Sorry, but I don't trust Google, and you shouldn't either. Google is a deeply unethical company because it follows you from your work to the restaurant to your bedroom, literally. Google knows everything about you: your sexual orientation, your friends, your hobbies, your political orientation. And Google does this invasion of privacy so they can show you an ad! Imagine any other multinational doing this, and there would be riots on the streets! But now Google also wants to know what you buy and when you buy it.

PS I consider Google to be the most unethical tech company in SV, for the following reasons: blatant invasion of privacy and monopolization of internet. No one is forced to use Facebook. On the other hand, Google reaches into every website and into every process that happens on the internet.

On the other hand, so is Facebook: their conversion pixel tracking, JS SDK (like button, login, pervasive as hell) is arguably significantly worse than Google Analytice.

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