Earlier this year, Google unveiled a new payment API at its annual developer conference. It’s called ‘Pay with Google’ and after months of being in the development phase, it is now officially rolling out to Android phones.
‘Pay with Google’ is a fairly straightforward payment system that streamlines the checkout process by offering a one-tap solution. As you would have guessed, having a common platform across various apps will essentially make those annoying payment forms obsolete. Once developers begin integrating it into their apps or websites, you will be able to simply choose the preferred credit or debit card from your Google account. You won’t need to setup it up again if you’ve added one in the past for transacting on platforms like Google Play or Android Pay.
For authentication, you will have to, of course, verify the transaction with a security code or using Google’s own proprietary 2FA on your Android phone. As of now, the number of compatible services is quite limited — 15 to be precise. This includes popular names such as Instacart, Airbnb, Hotel Tonight and more. Google says it doesn’t charge any additional fee for this. Furthermore, the implementation process has been kept brief as well as Google Payment API only requires “only a few lines of code”.
The Google Payment API was made available on Chrome’s desktop counterpart as well yielding a relatively coherent and familiar approach. The search engine juggernaut has been doubling down on digital payments for quite awhile now and recently, launched a dedicated UPI-based app in India as well. The application also comes with integrated support for businesses.
Hence, we expect the company to add an option for Tez in the Payment API in future updates. The lack of digital wallets, however, can impede its adoption rate. That being said, the benefit of native compatibility does sound inviting for developers. It will be interesting how they attempt to leapfrog existing services and establish a dominant position in the market.
