What is Android Pay?
Android Pay will be Google's newest mobile payment app. It will work on devices running Android 4.4 KitKat and up. In Android 4.4 Google introduced native support for tap & pay mobile wallet apps. In the spirit of open source this was a good thing, it allowed developers the chance to become the next mobile wallet app of choice. The only problem is that mobile payments are extremely complex and the support in Android 4.4 was just to allow apps to work better in instances where multiple mobile wallets were installed and just overall better support. When you create a mobile wallet app you need to have agreements with financial institutions to facilitate those transactions. Android Pay does that by creating a better platform for these apps. It is the same thing as Google Wallet but when something is labeled Android that means it is open source and can be used by other developers where you couldn't do that with Google Wallet. 
The other neat feature that this will allow is for shopping apps. When you go to check out you can use Android Pay instead of entering in all your information. Apple Pay has a very similar (may be the same) implementation and this would essentially allow the user to store their payment information and not have to enter it into every app they buy items from.
The Fingerprint Sensor
The fingerprint sensor support is a pretty big deal. While Samsung has implemented a fingerprint sensor on their newer devices they are not technically supported directly by Android. Thus, they cannot be used by apps to make authentication easier other than to unlock the phone and work with proprietary apps. For example, if you had Google Wallet on your Galaxy Note 4, you can't use the fingerprint sensor to authorize a purchase because Android doesn't make it easy for developers to implement that, instead they would need to build a separate app for Samsung phones that leverages Samsung's code for the sensor.
Why You Should Care
There isn't much to break down other than the fact that this will help increase the adoption of mobile payments. Users will be able to pay for items at the store without swiping their card. Users will be able to take advantage of these new features and use whatever payment app they want. So users are free to use Samsung Pay or any other mobile wallet because they will be able to take advantage of the feature provided by Android Pay. Online shopping, as I mentioned earlier, will become much easier to do since your payment information is stored in the app.
Fingerprint support is going to bring in a slew of new security features for phones. Not only will you be able to unlock your phone with your finger, you will be able to set certain apps so they cannot be opened without authentication. So you can keep Facebook, Snapchat, and even your text messages safe from people using your phone. Think of any instance where you have to type in a username and password, with a fingerprint sensor, you can use autofill to fill in that information after you swipe your finger.
No comments:
Post a Comment