Google Pay with Google Wallet launched in Malaysia this morning and we’ve been giving it the old college try at the office, and we’ve discovered something quite interesting. When you enable this function and set up your payment cards, you can actually pay with Google Pay at contactless payment terminals without unlocking your phone.
Initially, we were underwhelmed by the fact that there was no specific shortcut command to get you into Google Pay. Samsung, for example, lets you swipe up from the bottom of your phone to access Samsung Pay. Meanwhile, Apple lets you double tap the power button to activate Apple Pay. But from our initial testing, there didn’t seem to be a shortcut beyond launching the Wallet app.
However, my colleague Najib later found out that you don’t have to do that at all. In fact, you don’t have to launch any app. Just tap your device at a supported contactless payment terminal and Google Pay will automatically pay for your purchase.
This means that you won’t even need to unlock your smartphone to pay with Google Pay. Google does mention on their website that this is for “smaller payments” and in Malaysia, paying without unlocking your smartphone has a transaction limit of RM250. Once you unlock your phone though, a CIMB rep tells us that there is no transaction limit.
Google also recommends as a “tip” to set up your smartphone so that it requires your phone to be unlocked to complete a near field communication (NFC) transaction. However, we weren’t able to find this setting on our devices, so it appears that Malaysia isn’t one of the countries with the capability to enable this feature.
Now, there are two sides of the coin for something like this. There’s the angle that this is probably the most convenient of the three “Pay” services to pay with your smartphone because it requires basically no input. But, there’s also the concern that this is the least safe way as well.
But I think the way to look at it is that this is the most similar to a regular contactless card experience. There’s no authentication before payment when you tap your card on a terminal, and the safeguard is the same RM250 transaction limit that Google Pay also imposes.
That said, technology should improve on experiences, in my opinion. As someone who has avidly used Samsung Pay and Apple Pay, I appreciate the added layer of security that requires me to authenticate before each purchase, and the deliberate nature of needing to activate it with a swipe or double tap shortcut before making payments.
What do you think though? Is this a pro or a con?
