Erste Bank has joined Google Pay as the third domestic bank, so that three of the ten major domestic banks can already pay through the most popular Android payment system. Takarékbank also announced its highly anticipated joining recently, and there is no doubt that other banks will not miss this opportunity.
However, not much has been said yet about Google Pay, while mobile payment options replacing credit cards have been with us in Hungary since 2013.
This is because Google has been a bit late with its payment solution, even though it learned a lot from its past mistakes recently. In addition, its rival, Apple, has also chased the search giant into the competition, so the birth of Google Pay was in fact expected.
“Google Pay could evolve into a global payment service for android devices, like Apple Pay for iPhone, which is already used by a large number of people, especially in the US and Canada, and in Europe, especially in the UK. Salary. Still in its infancy, But the government’s decision to adopt the mandatory electronic payment of online cash registers from this year has led to a significant increase in the number of electronic payment points, which may also greatly help the spread of in-store touch-screen mobile payment. – Peter Gergely, bank accounts expert at BiztosDöntés.hu, told Origó.
So the infrastructure required for the new mobile payment method is already available, as it is the same commercial places where we can pay with credit card by touch. In order to be able to pay with mobile phone instead of credit card in the same places, no further development is required, It has already happened in recent years.
Google Pay for in-store touchscreen mobile payments
Google Pay isn’t the first swallow in the line of mobile payment options. Over the past decade, Origo has been reporting when a new bank launched its own Mobile Payment Solution at existing credit card acceptance points, so these solutions are now available to many customers. Of the top 10 local banks, nine currently have some form of mobile payment solution, nine of which offer it for iOS platforms, such as the iPhone, and seven for the Android camp.
Erste Bank, which has just joined Google Pay, was among the top seven local banks, so the range didn’t expand with today’s announcement. However, the important difference is that until now, Erste customers can only use the bank’s mobile application, but from now on they can also enter the world of global payments.
Until now, Android smartphone owners have had to wait for their bank to develop a mobile app, which will be available for in-store touchscreen mobile payments if they have a so-called mobile payment. With NFC circuit.
Or they can join the user group of a simple mobile application developed with a local OTP background, but independently of the bank, where a special bank card issued by an OTP bank can be used to pay with a mobile phone in stores for a long time, and this particular card can be loaded with a bank card issued for any bank. Thus, indirectly, almost all customers of domestic bank cards can pay in stores with one touch, even if they want to. However, this solution has strong limitations due to local legal regulations, as the top-up can only be done up to HUF 45,000 and the same monthly limit is available for users to purchase cards from the store.
Therefore, so far only private local bank applications have been available for in-store mobile payments. However, the situation has changed recently and a sign of that change now is the joining of Erste Bank.
More and more banks are joining Google Pay
As Origo wrote, in September 2021 the Google Pay mobile app was finally available (i.e. downloadable from the App Store) for local Android users, and its importance is much greater than it first appears.
Perhaps the clearest example of this is that after barely a month, CIB has already made it possible to register its bank cards in Google Pay, while it has yet to offer any in-store touch mobile payment application to its customers. With this, it became the first local bank to offer this type of payment option exclusively to Google Payers for android devices.
By the way, K&H Bank joined Google Pay in April 2021, in addition to it and Erste Bank, but according to press reports, it is expected that this year will also join Takarékbank, which, like CIB, does not have its own Android application for – mobile payments storage .
So in September of this year, the ecosystem that had been around for iPhones from the start kicked off the most popular Android boot camp: The in-store touch screen mobile payment application is provided by the developer of the mobile operating system and joined by the banks.
However, there are also a large number of non-Google banking apps developed on Android, which already cost 1.76 million downloads with OTP Simple. The big question is whether banks will keep the in-store touchscreen mobile payment feature as part of their own development, or leave it to Google Pay.
What is Google Pay?
So it is sure that Google Pay will enter our lives sooner or later and the banks at home will join them as well. Therefore, it is worth taking a look at what the search giant’s payment application offers to Hungarians, as it can be used with different options in each country.
Hungarian Google Pay It not only offers the in-store touch mobile payment discussed so far, but it offers much more than that.
Most importantly, it is also suitable for online payments in online stores where you can also pay using Google Pay. As banks are now trying to connect to in-store mobile payments, online stores around the world are expected to join Google Pay. Of course, the existing payment options will be retained in addition to Google Pay, but it is expected that there will be a huge temptation to use Google Pay to fill in the postal address and ship a web store order, which we already store in Google. This will be a really serious draw, especially in online stores where the visitor has not yet registered, because this Google Pay tag will not be completely necessary from now on. This can significantly reduce the time spent on online purchase, even now requires registration without registering address information.
The same payment option will be available for in-app payments in Android, which are usually demanded in exchange for ad-free content or other benefits for subscribers.
It may seem normal, but for some business services, the ability to buy Google products using Google Pay also does not apply.
However, Google Pay does not currently offer a comprehensive set of local services that include paying for a traffic ticket, highway sticker, home parking, or event ticket, and you cannot top up your mobile phone balance within the app. Therefore, it is still beneficial to use locally developed mobile applications.
Google Pay in Erste
At Erste Bank, Google Pay can be used with cards from major card companies (Mastercard or Visa), including commercial debit and credit cards.
According to the announcement of the novelty, the bank expects a huge leap in mobile payments in the future. In Hungary, the number of Android devices is currently about five times the number of Apple devices, but at the moment the last customer base is using the mobile payment solution more actively. At Erste, 60 percent of cards and customers currently registered (the so-called token) in mobile apps can be connected to Apple Pay, while the solution share is 70 percent higher for active devices.
In addition, Apple Pay users pay three times as much as mobile or card users like customers who download the bank’s mobile payment Android app so far.
