Google's Android Pay hits Australia

Android Pay has launched in Australia, with ANZ Bank being the first of the Big Four able to use the phone-only facility. The technology allows mobile payments to be made directly from mobile phones in what payment security types say is a boon to anti-fraud initiatives. It is live for Australia's ANZ Bank, Macquarie, MyState …

[ratfox]

Why payments work better in China

There you go. Largest phone OS maker launches a payment system in a country, and the largest bank in the country refuses to participate, because they also have an app for that. Everybody wants to "own the experience".

[Gene Cash]

> Users of rooted handsets and custom ROMs will likely be out of luck attempting to install Android Pay.

Actually it appears to only check for root when you add a card, and there are ways to get around that.

[Gis Bun]

Poor Australia.

[Jeffrey Nonken]

"Users of rooted handsets and custom ROMs will likely be out of luck attempting to install Android Pay."

Which doesn't suck at all, except for a) all the tons of crap apps mobile operators force on you in the stock ROMs; b) the number of perfectly good phones that are orphaned once said operators lose interest in upgrading them. A year or two into deployment, I expect, or whenever they start pushing the latest new Shiny.

Cyanogenmod makes my phone more configurable and leaner at the same time, as well as being able to run the latest builds of Marshmallow instead of an old version of Lollipop. It's actually more secure than stock ROM, which will never be updated. Google Pay can suck my left nut.

[Originone]

CBA's absence may be conspicuous....

....but it is hardly surprising. CBA have a tap and pay functionality baked into their own mobile banking app for close to two years. Far from being absent it seems more like they are well out in front of the others.

[ratfox]

Re: CBA's absence may be conspicuous....

Android pay is probably going to work in other countries. Will CBA's app work in the US?

[Originone]

Re: CBA's absence may be conspicuous....

Probably not but 99% of most people's pay wave transactions will be in their country of residence so it's not really a significant detractor. A bigger detractors is CBA's app requires launching switching to the tap and pay function and entering a PIN before being able to conduct the transaction, I understand Android Pay is somewhat more convenient than that