Android Pay goes live in Poland

Android Pay, which enables contactless mobile payments with Android devices, has launched in Poland. This is the first country in Central and Eastern Europe and the second country in Europe, after the UK, to roll out the payments service.

Google confirmed the news last week, saying how millions of Mastercard cardholders in Poland can now pay wherever Mastercard contactless payments are accepted. “Android Pay is available in Poland to the holders of Mastercard cards issued by Alior Bank, T-Mobile Banking Services and Bank Zachodni WBK. Other banks will be successively deploying the Google service.”

Bartosz Ciołkowski, country manager Poland at Mastercard Europe, says he is happy that Google has chosen Poland as the second market in Europe to launch its payment service. “Thanks to a high market share of Android OS in Poland and highly developed payment infrastructure, our country has a huge potential to widely adopt the technology in a short time, as was the case with contactless payments.”

How Android Pay works

Android Pay makes use of a tokenization technology, that generates a digital token that’s associated with the customer’s device. When the consumer shops and pays with Android Pay, the token and not the real card number is provided to the store.

Payments in shopping apps

In order to be able to pay with Android Pay, Polish consumers need to be a Masterdcard cardholder and they have to download the Android Pay to their phone with Android 4.4 or higher and with NFC technology. Mobile contactless payments can be made at 425.000 contactless terminals in Poland and over 6 million worldwide. Soon, payments can also be done in shopping apps.

Google unveiled Android Pay in May last year in the US and launched the payments service for the first time in Europe, by introducing it in the United Kingdom this May.