What's New in Payments

Google Pay rolls out across Scandinavia

Google Pay

Google Pay is now live in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland, with support from Jyske Bank, Nordea and Revolut in Denmark, Nordea, Revolut, Monobank, Storebrand Bank and Sparebanken Sør in Norway, Nordea, Revolut, Länsförsäkringar Bank and Sodexo in Sweden and Nordea, Revolut and Edenred in Finland... More






What's New in Payments

ANZ replaces its goMoney Wallet with Google Pay

ANZ launches Google Pay — ANZ Bank — “Google Pay replaces ANZ’s goMoney Wallet, ANZ’s current Android mobile wallet, which will be phased out from October this year… The move to Google Pay will provide customers with a faster and more reliable way to make contactless payments, particularly on older Android devices. It also allows ANZ to offer an Android mobile payment solution to more customers.”


What's New in Payments

Paytm to test face verification for payments in stores?

Paytm is testing face recognition tool for payments — Economic Times — “Paytm has begun testing a facial recognition tool that can unlock its payments application on a customer’s smartphone, company executives said. It also plans to extend this feature to allow customers to pay at merchant outlets with the blink of an eye… Paytm is testing the facial recognition feature on Google’s Android platform, and according to sources, will shortly roll it out through an app update. Offline payments through face recognition, however, would take longer, they said.”


What's New in Payments

Google Pay closes payments data sharing loophole

Google tweaks privacy policy for Indian payment app after rival complaint — Reuters — “Google has tweaked the privacy policy of its Indian digital payments mobile application, days after local rival Paytm complained that the US tech giant’s platform allowed disclosure of customer data for advertising and other purposes… Google Pay’s privacy policy had said it could ‘collect, store, use and/or disclose’ personal data and ‘any communications made through Google Pay’. A Reuters review of Google’s privacy policy that was updated on Thursday showed the company had dropped the word ‘disclose’ from its privacy clause.”


What's New in Payments

Google Pay goes live in Italy

Google Pay has arrived — Google Blog Italia (translation) — “Simply add a credit, debit or prepaid card (Maestro, MasterCard, Visa) issued by any of the supported banks and credit institutions to the Google Pay app — including Banca Mediolanum, Boon, Hype, Nexi, N26, Revolut, Widiba and, in the coming months, Iccrea Banca and Poste Italiane — to turn your Android smartphone into a wallet. Users can also activate the service directly in the mobile banking app of their bank.”



What's New in Payments

Mobile contactless payment volumes to rise by 30% a year to 2022

451 Research’s Global Unified Commerce Forecast uncovers dramatic shifts in consumer spending patterns — 451 Research — “Mobile contactless payments will surpass $1 trillion globally in 2022. Sales executed via mobile contactless payment methods such as Apple Pay and Google Pay are growing at an impressive 30.7% CAGR through 2022. However, they will account for just 1.4% of global brick and mortar retail sales this year and reach only 3.8% by 2022.”


What's New in Payments

Singapore Airlines adds boarding passes to Google Pay

SIA introduces seamless access to mobile boarding passes via Google Pay — Singapore Airlines — “Customers travelling with Singapore Airlines (SIA) can now have the added flexibility of saving their mobile boarding pass on Google Pay, the digital wallet platform and online payment system developed by Google. This is the first time an airline in the Asia-Pacific region has such a capability on Google Pay.”


What's New in Payments

Mastercard comes under fire for sharing transaction data with Google

Google and Mastercard cut a secret ad deal to track retail sales — Bloomberg — “For the past year, select Google advertisers have had access to a potent new tool to track whether the ads they ran online led to a sale at a physical store in the US. That insight came thanks in part to a stockpile of Mastercard transactions that Google paid for… Google paid Mastercard millions of dollars for the data, according to two people who worked on the deal.”


NFC World

Google rolls out Titan Security Keys with NFC

Titan Security Keys: Now available on the Google Store — Google — “In July, we announced Titan Security Keys, Fido security keys built with a hardware chip that includes firmware engineered by Google to verify the keys’ integrity. Starting today, Titan Security Keys are available for purchase on the Google Store… Security keys can be used to authenticate to Google as well as Dropbox, Facebook, GitHub, Salesforce, Stripe, Twitter, and other services that support Fido standards.”


NFC World

Wear OS update lets smartwatch users make faster NFC payments

Google’s redesigned Wear OS might make smartwatches worth buying again — Mashable — “Previously, if you wanted to use Google Pay on your smartwatch, you’d need to launch the app, which was a multi-tap process. Now, you can make a payment much quicker. It’s not as quick as double-pressing the side button on the Apple Watch to fire up Apple Pay, but it’s way faster than the old way.”




Google rebrands its Tez mobile wallet to Google Pay

Building services for every Indian, in their language — Google India — “Since launching our India-first payments app Tez last September, over 22 million people and businesses have used Tez to make over 750m transactions that are collectively worth over $30bn annually. We believe that many of the innovations and features we have pioneered with Tez will work in other countries. To take Tez beyond India, we will be unifying all of Google’s payment offerings globally. As a first step, Tez will now be called Google Pay.”