A leaked email suggests that Android Pay may be coming to the USA as early as Wednesday.
What looks like a leaked notice to McDonalds employees suggests that Android Pay will be released on Wednesday the 26th of August to Android users in the USA. The notice also gives an inaccurate date for the release of Samsung Pay, apparently mistaking it for the US release date for the Note 5.
Source: Android Police
Android Pay is the newest of the contactless phone payment systems to come into operation, following Apple Pay and EE’s Cash on Tap. Samsung is also in the process of preparing to launch its own Near Field Communication (NFC) payment system, but hasn’t announced a release date as yet.
At its simplest, Android Pay turns your phone into a credit or debit card. For those familiar with contactless payment cards, like the ones Visa and MasterCard have been rolling out for the past few years, it works exactly the same way. First, you link your card to your phone. Then, when you want to pay for something, you simply touch your phone to the reader and authorise the payment if requested. Voila! Your items have been paid for.
Unfortunately, there’s still no word on when – or if – it’s likely to come to the UK. European law is tighter on security than US laws, which means that Android Pay may have to undergo some modifications before it’s used on this side of the Atlantic.
