Apple Pay To Land In The UK In July & Why Android Pay Will Succeed Where Google Wallet Failed

WIRED: Apple Pay, the payments service that allows for contactless payments in stores and one-touch payments in apps, is finally launching in the UK.

Apple made the announcement on stage at WWDC in San Francisco, the company’s annual developer conference. The service is due to launch next month with eight of the most popular banks, with more coming in the spring. The main omission from the list is Barclays, which has traditionally been one of the more forward-thinking of the big British banks when it comes to technology. Read the full article

Read more on the topic: TECHCRUNCH

Interviews with analysts, merchants and others suggest that many retailers remain skeptical about Apple Pay, according to Reuters.

WIRED: Google already offered a payments service. It was called Google Wallet, and like Android Pay, it was a way of using your smartphone to pay for stuff both in stores and online. The name—Android Pay—was new. But as the company unveiled the service at its annual developer conference, even that had a familiar ring. It was an echo of Apple Pay, the payments service that arrived on the iPhone to much fanfare this past fall. To be sure, Android Pay will streamline Google Wallet in some ways, whether you’re tapping your phone to an NFC reader at a McDonald’s or ordering food from the GrubHub app. Google will offer tools that lets online banking apps plug into its payments service, perhaps easing the process of, say, getting your credit card onto your phone. And brands like Coca Cola are offering rewards programs. But these are relatively small changes. The big difference—barely discussed at the Google I/O developer conference—is that AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile will preinstall Android Pay on phones when the service is ready later this year. According to Osama Bedier, the former PayPal exec who oversaw the creation of Google Wallet and now runs the payments startup Poynt, this is the big thing Google Wallet was missing—and the big thing that could make an Android-based payments service (and mobile payments in general) take off. Read the full article