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Comment by maurys | Hacker News Reader

Is Google Pay new in the rest of the world? It has been very successful in India as a UPI-based payment method.

India has gotten aggressively cashless (at least in cities) and Google Pay definitely rode that wave here.

Google Pay has existed for a long time pre-UPI. The UPI app was known as Google Tez until the brands were combined last year, it's now called.Google.Pay but the app is still separate from the actual Google Pay app. (NFC wallet being the primary mobile functionality of the same)

Both Google Pay and Apple Pay showed up a little to late in many countries. Local alternatives already dominated, so neither have really been able to gain traction.

Seeming someone try to use Apple Pay in Denmark is a bit of a novelty. It works and is reasonably well supported by payment terminals, but why bother when you already have MobilePay, which have even wider support and more features?

I have yet to encounter someone who uses Google Pay.

I use Google Pay every single day in Denmark. My wife uses Samsung Pay every single day in Denmark. It's hard to see what people use when they touch their silicon and glass rectangles to the terminal, harder still when COVID-19 distances are mandated in all stores here.

I personally prefer to use contactless cards or Google Pay instead of MobilePay.

The major reason behind this is mainly due to how MobilePay integration was done with the card terminals over here in Finland: you need bluetooth (or in some cases, a camera to read a QR-code) to start the payment transaction. I believe this is primarily due to Apple restricting the use of NFC to Apple Pay (and other first-party apps).

Another big reason is that my bank has native support for adding cards to Google Pay through their own app.

I do still use MobilePay very often over my bank's own transfer app (Siirto). MobilePay was one of the first ones to the market (if you exclude the app/card scheme Elisa had a few years ago, currently owned by Aktia) and is still faster than asking for someone's IBAN.

I set it up, used it once, and then realised it's exactly like using the contactless card I already have in my wallet. I can maybe see the point of using it on a watch, but on a phone?

Slightly useful for in-app payment with Just Eat, though.

I use Google Pay for my personal account, and a normal VISA/Dankort for my shared account. It's convenient to easily find the right payment method. If Danske Bank would only issue cards with different textures! With Google Pay I just touch my phone to the terminal while Mobile Pay requires more steps (90% of my Mobile Pay purchases are... fancy strawberries).

I'd like to use it in Serbia but it's not available, instead there are plans to make local alternatives for card-based payments, but for debit accounts you can show or scan a QR code and perform an instant and free payment. Support for this is mandated by law. Not NFC but contactless (even more so, optical scanning vs near field radio waves) and compatible with any device with a screen and camera (or POS cash register with barcode reader).

Google Pay has never even been available in certain parts of Europe and isn't available in Africa, the Middle East, most of Asia and in most countries in South America.

The exclusion of Asia and certain European countries surprises me somewhat, but that may be because there's not a large market for it (because local initiatives have already taken the market).

I've used Google Pay for years but all it does is let you add a credit card and use your phone at merchants that support contactless cards or for in-app purchases on Android. I've never heard of using it to send money or store a balance.

It may vary from country to country but at least in the US Google Pay allows for sending and receiving money.

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