Android Pay Arrives — and It Looks Eerily Familiar

Google teased the release of Android Pay in the presentation of its “M” release today at Google I/O and it looked quite a bit like Apple Pay in every way, from its logo to its user experience. Sayonara, Google Wallet?

Google’s official blogpost on Android Pay is here. In the post, retail partners are listed and the following statement is made: “Android Pay will be available on Google Play for download soon. And when your bank integrates, you could also activate Android Pay directly from your bank app.”

Android Pay will roll out when M is released later this year. Google disclosed today that it is working closely with payment networks and banks on Android Pay, Dave Burke, VP of engineering, said. No bank partners were mentioned today, although images of the four card networks appeared during the I/O demo. (Update: U.S. Bank emailed an announcement that customers would soon be able to add cards to Android Pay shortly after the announcement.)

Burke described mobile payments as one of six areas of user experience enhancements with M. Users will be able to use it where they see an NFC logo — the Apple Pay logo, probably more familiar to consumers, and quite similar to the Android Pay logo, was not mentioned.

Android Pay uses a “virtual card number” — otherwise known as tokenization, rather than sharing an actual card number. A deal with AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile was mentioned, so that when users switch phones, they don’t need to re-enter payment information. (Google purchased Softcard, the telco’s mobile wallet effort, last February.) Android Pay will work at over 700,000 stores in the U.S. — McDonald’s, Best Buy, Bloomingdales, Subway, Walgreen’s, Jamba Juice, and Staples, were just a few of the brands that appeared onscreen when the announcement was made today, thank you Softcard — and through any NFC device. Merchant rewards are already a part of Android Pay, according to Google. They are expected to arrive on Apple Pay very soon. Samsung Pay, another competitor, does not even need NFC to facilitate a payment. Remember, all Samsung phones are on, er, Android.

Android Pay will also authorize payments with a fingerprint on fingerprint-enabled devices, much like Apple Pay, and will be available in-app with companies such as Lyft, Uber, Groupon and Etsy.

Braintree, Discover, MasterCard and First Data all announced Android partnerships on Twitter. Partnerships with Stripe, Vantiv  and CyberSource are also mentioned by Google. The ecosystem play, Google argues, is what sets Android Pay apart from that other mobile payment system. But what impact will it have on the fragmented Android market?

Payments guru Brian Roemmele told Bank Innovation there was no doubt Google got similar pricing from the banks, and will likely produce payments volume roughly equal to that of Apple Pay.

It was tough to find anything about Android Pay that was different from Apple Pay. We are not even hearing that Google secured any of the pricing concessions Apple Pay extracted from issuing banks. Oh, wait, there is one difference: Android Pay works on Android devices.