Google Pay (soon Google Wallet): what is it and how does this virtual wallet work?

Google recently announced a major change to its Google Pay payment app, which will now be called Google Wallet. The new features that come to the app are a response to its direct competition Apple Wallet.

The tech giant’s payment app is currently available in several countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Poland, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Chile and New Zealand

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Countries where Google Pay is active. (Google/)

What is it and how it works?

Google Wallet is a platform developed for use in payment systems from mobile devices, which offers users the ability to make payments with Android devices, tablets or smart watches.

Uses near field communication (NFC) to transmit information from the card, thus facilitating the transfer of funds. It is a system that replaces the use of the debit or credit card chip, PIN or magnetic stripe card transaction in the point of sale terminals to allow the user to load these in the Wallet or virtual wallet. It is similar to contactless Payment, but with the cell phone and with the addition of two-step verification.

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In this way, users can add payment cards to the service to later pay at points of sale. All you have to do is bring your cell phone close to the POS.

google-wallet

According to the specialized media Xataka, Google’s payment application will soon evolve to become a direct rival to Apple Wallet (which already works in our country). Google Wallet will integrate new functions, such as the possibility of adding -in the future- the driver’s license.

The new Wallet will interact with Android in a deeper way, so that the user has greater integration between Google apps and their cards.

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Thus, for example, if we have a flight and we have saved the ticket in the wallet, it will give alerts about last minute changes, delays, among other things and everything automatically. Or if we go to a concert, we will receive notifications about our tickets.

According to information from Google, these new changes are expected to arrive very soon to all Android and Wear OS mobiles in more than 40 countries.

Source: Elcomercio