Customers will now be able to pay from their PayPal balance through the Android Pay app or participating stores following a partnership between Google and PayPal.
This move is seen as a strategic move by both Google and PayPal as the mobile wallet space is increasingly growing to become the next frontier of cashless payments. There is currently a fierce competition within the mobile wallet space, albeit the major players being Android Pay, Apple Pay, and Samsung Pay.
In the initial days of PayPal and Android Pay partnership, customers will be able to pay from their PayPal balance through the Android Pay app. The integration is also said to be working on more possibilities such as customers using cards stored within PayPal. A move made possible by the recent PayPal’s tokenization partnership with card networks.
“Consumers in the U.S. will be able to use PayPal in Android Pay at retailers from Walgreens to Dunkin’ Donuts,” said PayPal COO Bill Ready. “This partnership will enable our customers to pay across even more contexts and will extend PayPal’s mobile leadership and reach as consumers become more comfortable shopping and buying on their mobile devices.
On the heels of our partnerships with Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Citi, FIS, and others, we’re excited to announce we’re expanding our relationship with Wells Fargo to soon enable our joint customers to pay with their Wells Fargo credit or debit card for contactless payments in-store.”
The FinTech space is increasingly becoming crowded with the mushrooming of FinTech-based payment solutions across the world. Take, for instance, Stripe, which has been a growing competition for PayPal, so much so that Peter Thiel (a co-founder of PayPal) has invested some money in it.