Android Pay Becomes Available in Spain
| Updatedby Maria Konash · 3 min read
Spain gets Android Pay, which will allow its customers to use their Visa and MasterCard debit or credit card with BBVA to conduct payments with their mobile phones.
Google is continuing its global roll out of its Android Pay mobile payment system. Now the next country to get Android Pay is Spain.
This payment system will allow customers to use their Visa and MasterCard debit or credit card with BBVA in order to pay with their mobile phones. The fact that only BBVA customers will be able to add their supported Visa or MasterCard cards to the mobile wallet must be the biggest downside at the time of launch. However, those, who are not clients of BBVA bank shouldn’t get upset as Google claims that more partners will be added to the network in the coming months.
Where to use Android Pay?
It works anywhere contactless payments are accepted, which amounts to over one million stores in Spain including, among others, such widely-known ones as El Corte Inglés, VIPS, Zara, Bershka, H&M, LIDL, Media Markt.
Android Pay isn’t just accepted in stores but in some apps like like Vueling, Hotel Tonight, and TransferWise as well.
The system also works in a wide range of payment providers and banks.
The launch is likely to bring some profit for business owners too. Now it will become easy to accept Android Pay at stores, websites and apps. The system’s developers teamed up with a diverse group of leading payment platforms, processors, and technology providers, such as Adyen, Braintree, IMSolutions, and Stripe, which makes it possible to give customers a faster way to pay for the goods and services.
“The agreement with Android Pay seeks to make it easier for customers to pay with their cell phones – a device that is being used more and more.” – said Antonio Macías, Strategy and Transformation Director at BBVA Spain’s Payments Systems and Consumer Loan Area.
For context, 90% of the cell phones in the market use Android platform today, which means that this system will allow quite a great number of BBVA customers to pay with their smartphones.
Spain is the 14th country to get Google’s mobile payment system following the US, Canada and Russia, Taiwan and Japan.
It is to note, that not only Google reaches out the public with its payment system. Samsung Electronics also expands by rolling out its wireless mobile payment option Samsung Pay in the UK (following the US, China, Spain and others). The system works in a similar to its competitors’ payment platforms way, enabling payments anywhere contactless credit or debit cards are accepted.
Another competitor of Google’s payment system is Apple Pay, also used in 14 countries, including, among others, the US, the UK, Canada, China and Russia. It’s compatible with such proximity cards readers as Visa PayWave, MasterCard PayPass, American Express ExpressPay.
