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Consumers making online purchases with their Android devices now have a new way to pay for them through a special payments account.
Pay with Google, a service that Google announced at its I/O event in May, has officially gone live. Starting Oct. 23, people will be able to pay for purchases made on the mobile Web or from within mobile applications using verified credit or debit cards saved to their Google Account.
When buyers finish making a purchase and arrive at a participating merchant’s online checkout page they will be presented with an option for paying with Google. If the buyer chooses that option, Google will send the merchant the buyer’s stored payment information as well as the shipping address associated with the account. The merchant then handles the transaction like any other credit or debit card transaction, without the buyer having to do anything more.
Pay with Google eliminates the need for purchasers to fill out payment information and forms when buying items online. It is designed primarily to speed up the checkout process for people using their mobile phone or tablet to buy and pay for goods and services online.
“If you’ve ever paid for something on your phone or tablet, you know just how frustrating checkout can be,” noted Pali Bhat, the vice president of products at Google’s Payments group in a blog Oct. 23.
“Maybe you had to fill in a bunch of forms. Maybe your session timed out. Maybe you encountered an error and had to start all over again.” The new payment option is designed to eliminate that hassle by enabling users to complete purchases with just a few clicks, he said.
Bhat listed more than two dozen merchants that currently allow consumers to use Pay with Google for online purchases. The list includes Airbnb, Kayak, SutbHub and Papa John. Consumers will be able to use the payment option at several other merchants soon, Bhat said.
In May, Google announced the Google Payment Application Programming Interface (API), which underlies the new service. The company had described the API as giving mobile app developers a way to provide a streamlined checkout experience for their customers.
Developers only have to add a few lines of code to integrate Pay with Google into their online sales applications according to the company. Google has said it doesn’t charge developers any transaction fees on payments made via Pay with Google.
In addition, Google has also partnered with multiple payment providers to further simplify the task of integrating Pay with Google in mobile applications and websites, Bhat said.
Among them are Braintree, Vantiv and Stripe. Google is also working with several others including EBank, First Data, Global Payments and WorldPay. Google is working to develop partnerships with other payment providers as well, Bhat said.