Google has announced some numbers for its Android Pay mPayment platform at this week’s Money20/20 conference.
They aren’t hard numbers. Technically they aren’t even specific numbers: Six weeks after its American launch, the platform has “millions” of users on board, according to Google advertising SVP Sridhar Ramaswamy. It’s vague, but it does suggest that the service has at least two million users, which makes its success somewhat comparable to that of Samsung Pay in South Korea.
Google is keen to get more users signed up, of course, and is flexing a bit of marketing muscle to that end. The company has teamed up with Coke to offer special rewards to consumers who buy the drink using Android Pay. More such partnerships are expected to follow. Google is also enlisting the help of mobile carriers and card companies to remind customers about Android Pay.
These are savvy moves, and necessary ones. Android Pay is up against serious competition in the form of entrenched mPayment leader Apple Pay and the upstart Samsung Pay, whose MST technology makes it compatible with older swipe-based card readers, unlike Apple Pay and Android Pay. Right now Android Pay’s main advantage is its growing compatibility with a range of Android-based smartphones.
Source: Re/Code
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