Android Pay

As some of you may recall, I had the great good fortune to be asked to interview Spencer X from Google on the main stage at Money 2020 Europe in Copenhagen.

Before I go on to what was discussed, let me first just go on record to sat what a great guy Spencer is. We discussed the general area of questions, but we did not discuss specific questions and we didn’t rehearse any questions or answers. As a result, the interaction was interesting and lively and got great feedback from the delegates. I think companies and speakers can often benefit greatly from being a little less scripted at an event like this, so thanks to Spencer and Google for a great discussion. Oh, and for my VIP ticket to the Rudimental party in the evening. I’d never had a “Moscow Mule” before, and now I won’t drink anything else.

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The reason that Spencer was in town was that AndroidPay is launching in Europe, starting with the UK. What most people in the audience were interested in was whether Google would charge the same “toll” to issuing banks as Apple does. 

“We’re certainly not tolling the issuing banks, we are not going to toll the merchants who are already under enormous pressure. Android needs to be best in class, it’s really very simple. Payments has to work and it has to work seamlessly.”

From Android Pay to expand into Europe ‘soon’ – Mobile Banking

The answer was no, and I assume it is because Google benefits from the data associated with the payment so the relatively minor toll that they could extract for the payment is nothing compared to being able to link purchases to searches and that sort of thing. Anyway, Spencer covered a whole bunch of interesting as aspects of AndroidPay to give us some indication of where it might go in the future.

A trial in the Bay Area involving 50 small businesses and 50  McDonald’s restaurants is allowing Google to hide payments in the background of retail transactions. It’s called Handsfree, it was announced at Google’s developer conference last month, and while this technology is admittedly in its “early days” as Spinnell puts it, it’s indicative of a future we’re heading toward where your identity matters more than your phone.

From Money20/20 Europe: Android Pay Handsfree is Easier Than Tapping

His main point, if I remember correctly, when challenged as to AndroidPay’s competitive positioning against the other “xPays” was that AndroidPay would be open. They intended to compete on APIs and SDKs and by exposing the AndroidPay functionality so that innovative developers can build on top of it. I was thinking about this because of a couple of discussions I’ve been in with clients recently about making the transition from selling propositions directly to customers to selling propositions to the developers who develop the customer propositions. Switching from persuading customers to use your service to persuading developers to use your service is hard. As I’m sure you’ll appreciate, it’s not just a matter of hanging out an API and hoping.

Contactless soaring in popularity

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Contactless now makes up one in five of all face to face card payments under £30, figures show after a five fold increase in their use by shoppers.

From Contactless soaring in popularity

So tap and pay is a tenth of a card transactions and a fifth of all low-value transactions. Having been working on contactless payment projects of one form or another for yonks, I’m so happy to see us at the point where merchants now have to have signs to tell consumers that they can’t tap rather than that they can.

[billy bishop POS]

But there’s a better way to pay that is already growing, and that is in-app.

POS Nordic nous

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In both Sweden and Norway, the migration to almost total “cashlessness” is being led from the bottom up. Bills and coins now represent just 2 percent of Sweden’s economy, compared with 10 percent in the euro-zone, and only about 20 percent of all consumer payments in Sweden have been made in cash

From The Fate of Big Bills- a Catalyst for Digital Payments? | Ariadne Plaitakis | LinkedIn

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POST Moving away from cards (and terminals)

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Android Pay, which allows owners of Android smartphones to tokenise their credit or debit cards and pay with their phones at contactless terminals, will launch in the UK “in the next few months”, promises Google.

From Does ‘pay by app’ mean an end to shopping queues? – BBC News

In the US, Google have relaunched their wallet product without the physical debit that it had before.

Google Wallet has been given a makeover, focussing peer-to-peer payments and wallet-to-bank transfers, making the physical card obsolete.

From Google ditches Wallet debit card

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Tesco takes on Apple with own mobile payment system – IGD Retail Analysis

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Tesco’s move makes it the latest grocer to develop its own technology to bypass the costly Android and Apple systems. Sainsbury’s for instance is trialling its SmartShop app which allows users to create their own shopping lists, navigate stores and make payments at dedicated kiosks, while Walmart has launched its own system in the US to expand customer payment options and increase the speed of checkouts in its stores.

From Tesco takes on Apple with own mobile payment system – IGD Retail Analysis

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Four Visions of the Future of Identity | Bank Think

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Develop an OAuth-like solution for banking and an e-KYC API like the Aadhaar card. Impress upon regulators the need to expand the set of accepted documents for KYC to reflect changing times and to promote financial inclusion while preventing illicit activity. Things like verified social media accounts or, in the case of immigrants or refugees, foreign national IDs (even ones that have expired) may work as well as a utility bill.

From Four Visions of the Future of Identity | Bank Think

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