PayPal’s recent update to their app, focused on a new look and a focus on peer-to-peer payments. Today, PayPal has announced a far more functional update for NFC payments fans will be coming this year, with the company advising they will start offering Tap & Pay in the US and Australia in 2016.
The new function will operate fairly ubiquitously it seems, with PayPal advising that their Android users will be able to simply tap and pay with the upcoming version of the PayPal app at nearly any location that accepts contactless Payments in both the US and Australia.
Dan Schulman, President & CEO, PayPal spoke about the need for PayPal to give users flexibility and choice in the way they move and manage their money. Offering NFC payments, especially in Australia where almost every supermarket checkout and even most smaller retailers have access to the contactless payment terminals. Mr Schulman said
Leveraging our mobile scale and leadership, platform-agnostic approach and partnerships, PayPal is uniquely poised to leverage new value propositions. We believe the financial system should be more seamless, secure and affordable to drive the hopes and aspirations of people outside the traditional financial system.
PayPal hasn’t given a time-frame for their rollout of contactless payments in Australia, but there’s a lot of competition for users in contactless payments with 2016 hotting up for Tap & Pay in Australia.
Google announced Host Card Emulation for NFC Payments, the technology that is behind the contactless payments offerings from a number of vendors, with Android Kit Kat back in 2013, so it’s taken almost two and a half years for Tap & Pay to take off in Australia, but take off it has.
Already this year, the National Australia Bank and ANZ have launched their Android based Tap & Pay mobile wallets, and the Commonwealth Bank has been offering improved Tap & Pay options for Android users quickly over the last couple of years.
Of course the ‘big’ Tap & Pay news is that Android Pay is arriving in Australia in the first half of 2016 and so too is Samsung’s home-grown contactless system, Samsung Pay. Samsung announced at their Galaxy S7 launch at Mobile World Congress, that the service would be expanding into more territories this year – of which Australia will be one according to partner American Express.
PayPal will advise more on their plans as the launch of Tap & Pay gets closer to launch.
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