When Google introduced Android Pay back at Google IO 2015 this year at the end of May, it displayed that Google would be taking the mobile payments solutions seriously, but at the time they didn’t give a hard date for a launch of the service. Alongside that, since there has been no confirmed launch date for Android Pay by Google, it means there is no confirmed date for when users can expect to see the app available to download to their devices. A new rumor circulating the internet over this weekend claims that Android Pay will be launching on August 26th, that’s this Wednesday.
The rumor begins and ends with the notice of a few postings at various McDonald’s restaurants which convey the changes coming to McDonald’s mobile payment solutions, describing what Android Pay is and how customers will be able to use it, as well as what employees will need to do. McDonald’s has generally always accepted Google Wallet as a payment solution when the app still provided that capability, but with the changes Google made to the Wallet service, transitioning the mobile payments to their newly announced Android Pay meant that businesses who supported Google Wallet or mobile payments would need to switch to support for Android Pay instead. The appearance of these announcements at McDonald’s chains seem to suggest that McDonald’s is masking that transition and that the Android Pay launch is close, and Google did say initially that Android Pay would be launching later this Summer so the end of August would seem like a reasonable time to enable the service.
While it’s entirely possible that Android Pay could launch this week, it’s also possible these notices are discussing the fact that McDonald’s will be starting their support for Android Pay on this day. The internal postings could also be based on old dates. They have apparently shown up at multiple locations though, so it makes you wonder if the launch is actually happening in the middle of this week. At least one rumor earlier this month also stated that Android Pay would be launching with the upcoming Nexus devices, so we can’t be entirely sure about when the actual dates will be. Wednesday is not too far off, just a few days out, so it won’t be long before consumers either have the capability to use Android Pay or don’t.
