[Bill Clinton]

Just wondering..

There's a NFC chip in the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini so it must be possible, I guess it would be limited to Android handhelds with NFC.

[WelshBluebird]

Yep.
https://www.android.com/pay/

Now if it will be available outside the US is a totally different question (as Google did have Google Wallet which offered the same thing but was only available in America IIRC).

[jchamier]

Quote:

Originally Posted by WelshBluebird

Now if it will be available outside the US is a totally different question (as Google did have Google Wallet which offered the same thing but was only available in America IIRC).

Google Wallet's biggest problem was Google wanted to capture the information about what you had bought, where, and which retailer - to go into their big database.

If Android Pay doesn't do this then more retailers will be interested. (Apple Pay doesn't capture any of your data).

[Gigabit]

In the EU I'd think retailers would definitely be up for supporting Android Pay.

In the USA it's probably a tiny bit less of a concern as the Android device use there is lower than in other areas of the world.

So, Google would be smart to launch this in the UK, primarily because the UK is a huge smartphone market and it has lots of services already that will be useful with Android Pay (e.g. London Underground).

[d123]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gigabit

In the EU I'd think retailers would definitely be up for supporting Android Pay.

In the USA it's probably a tiny bit less of a concern as the Android device use there is lower than in other areas of the world.

So, Google would be smart to launch this in the UK, primarily because the UK is a huge smartphone market and it has lots of services already that will be useful with Android Pay (e.g. London Underground).

I'm not so sure, any form of Android Pay isn't going to work on the lesser Chinese brands, or the cheap end of the market like Alcatel, most Huawei, ZTE, or even lower end Motorola, Sony, HTC or Samsung.

When you look at the higher end smartphone market I doubt it's all the much bigger than iPhone.

Can you imaging the PR furore when 70%-80% of Android phone owners are excluded, including many current phones..

[gavo360]

Is there a reason why none of the banking apps and the likes of paypal haven't tapped into nfc to allow payments that way. Does it really have to be done at the OS level?

[Mark in Essex]

Quote:

Originally Posted by d123

I'm not so sure, any form of Android Pay isn't going to work on the lesser Chinese brands, or the cheap end of the market like Alcatel, most Huawei, ZTE, or even lower end Motorola, Sony, HTC or Samsung.

When you look at the higher end smartphone market I doubt it's all the much bigger than iPhone.

Can you imaging the PR furore when 70%-80% of Android phone owners are excluded, including many current phones..

It probably is around say 25% of Android users that have a phone that supports NFC, but when you think Android has a 78% share of the market that is still quite a lot of phones that so support it (still around 20% of all the smartphone market share).

Whereas it's just the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus that support NFC so I presume that would be less than 10% of the smartphone market share?

[gavo360]

Quote:

Originally Posted by d123

I'm not so sure, any form of Android Pay isn't going to work on the lesser Chinese brands, or the cheap end of the market like Alcatel, most Huawei, ZTE, or even lower end Motorola, Sony, HTC or Samsung.

When you look at the higher end smartphone market I doubt it's all the much bigger than iPhone.

Can you imaging the PR furore when 70%-80% of Android phone owners are excluded, including many current phones..

More then 400 million android phones shipped with nfc last year so it is in plenty of cheap phones also.

[Bagov]

EE have had "Cash on Tap" for over two years. I had it on an HTC One Mini II until I sold it. It worked perfectly. EE launched it with big fanfare in 2013, but only a few handsets got the firmware that enabled it, and they never mention to any more on their website/adverts. Possibly they've been leaned upon by Apple?

[d123]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bagov

EE have had "Cash on Tap" for over two years. I had it on an HTC One Mini II until I sold it. It worked perfectly. EE launched it with big fanfare in 2013, but only a few handsets got the firmware that enabled it, and they never mention to any more on their website/adverts. Possibly they've been leaned upon by Apple?

It's still on their website.

http://ee.co.uk/ee-and-me/travel-shopping/cash-on-tap

Quote:

What is Cash on Tap?
Cash on Tap is a contactless payment service exclusively available on selected EE phones.

With Cash on Tap, you don't have to get your wallet out, withdraw cash or sort through change whenever you want to buy something. Simply tap your phone on any contactless card reader to pay for anything under £20.

You can already tap and pay in places like McDonalds, M&S, Pret A Manger and on Transport for London - trains, buses and the tube. Look out for the contactless logo.

Plus we've partnered with MasterCard® so you can rest assured that the service is totally safe and secure.

[jonmorris]

Cash on Tap was pretty good. Until Apple Pay can do the extra things that makes it so good, it's effectively the same thing - an alternative to using a CPC.

The problem is that it needed the right, EE supplied, handset and was a bit tricky to set up and get going. As such the take up must have been poor, and the lack of promotion suggests EE will quietly let it disappear in the future - especially once Google gets in on the act properly, so existing users can be migrated to another Android-based system.