Bank experts expect the number of users paying by phone to increase. (source: Google)
You can now make financial transactions simply by activating your smart phone and placing it close to the payment terminal. The Google Pay mobile payment application was introduced to Slovakia, the first country to receive the new payment tool, in late February.
“The introduction of Google Pay in Slovakia is a very important step for the overall acceptance of mobile payments because this service advanced the user’s experience of payment cardholders to a brand-new level,” Marcel Gajdoš, head of Visa for Slovakia and the Czech Republic, told The Slovak Spectator.
Slovakia is a very technologically-developed country and Slovaks happily accept technological novelties. Moreover, Slovaks are already used to paying with contactless cards and experts see paying with a mobile phone as just one step further.
“The future decisively belongs to mobile payments,” said Miroslav Lukeš, general director of Mastercard for Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Austria. “It is not necessary to carry a purse; it is enough to have a mobile phone, which most people always carry with themselves.”
Slovaks have been able to pay by smart phone since 2012 when Tatra Banka introduced its own solution. VÚB bank rolled out a similar app in 2014.
What is Google Pay?
Google Pay is an update of an earlier mobile payment app, Android Pay, to which Google added some new functionality. It can store credit cards, debit cards, loyalty cards, etc. and enable users to pay the same way in applications, on the web, and in stores.
Its users can pay with this app at any place enabling contactless payments; more than 43,000 selling points in Slovakia have these capabilities and are marked with the Google Pay icon.
“With Google Pay, it turns out that the actual magic of touching the terminal with your phone, hearing the beep and seeing the transaction immediately executed proved to be quite magical for many people,” said Petr Šmíd, Head of Consumer Marketing, CEE, Google, to The Slovak Spectator.
To use the service, people need to download the Google Pay app from Google Play and add their credit or debit cards. When paying at shops, all they need to do is place the mobile phone near the payment terminal. For security purposes, it’s necessary to unlock the phone if the payment exceeds €20.
Currently, the service is available to all Mastercard and Visa cardholders using Slovenská Sporiteľňa, mBank, Poštová Banka and J&T Banka. 365.bank will also launch the service soon.
