Android Pay arrives in Singapore
Pali Bhat, Google
Android Pay has launched in Singapore, making it the first country in Asia to get the system.
Pali Bhat, senior director of product management at Google, says Singapore was chosen as the third market worldwide after the US and UK due to the number of mobile phone users and highly developed infrastructure.
Android Pay will work with Visa and MasterCard cards from DBS Bank, OCBC Bank, POSB, Standard Chartered Bank and UOB. Google says there is no limit as to how many cards can be added by the consumer.
Android Pay was first launched in the US in September 2015, and this was followed by the launch in the UK in May.
Australia is expected to be next. Bhat says Google is still working with its partners in the country and the service will be “coming soon”.
He adds that Android Pay will be introduced to other Asian markets.
Third
Android Pay’s arrival in Singapore is later than Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, which landed in April and on 16 June respectively.
To try and stand out from the crowd, Bhat says the app is designed to be simple to use and play a “key part” of the Android Phone. The in-app purchase feature will also be turned on “later in the year” in apps such as Singapore Airlines and Uber.
In terms of security, Bhat says Google worked closely with banks and payment providers prior to rolling out the service and that it had “adopted industry-standard tokenisation”.
