The industry is waiting rather breathlessly for the roll out of Android Pay, now rumored to launch as soon as tomorrow. A recent article in ITPro walks through the features of Android Pay and Apple Pay for comparison and came to the conclusion:
Both use NFC technology in real-world scenarios and both offer one-tap online payments. Fundamentally, the only real difference is the operating system it is running on – if you have an iOS device, you will have to use Apple Pay and if you have an Android device you will have to use Android Pay (or Samsung Pay, if you have a Galaxy S6 or S6 Edge).
Apple Pay does have one feature that Android Pay does not, however: it works on smartwatches (specifically Apple Watch), whereas Android Pay so far only appears to work on Android proper and not Android Wear.
What the article misses, however, are some of the important comparisons between Samsung Pay and Android Pay. This is a little more relevant as those individuals with a Samsung device will have the option of choice in their mobile app, unlike iPhone users. Samsung Pay which will work with both NFC and non-NFC enable merchant terminals and would seem to have a leg up on the competition, however, mobile provider Verizon, the largest seller of Samsung phones in the U.S., is currently not supporting Samsung Pay. This is going to be interesting.
Overview by Sarah Grotta, Director, Debit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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