Newsletter 
HTC has announced that its flagship smartphones from the last three years will all support Android Pay, once Google’s all-new mobile payment system launches later this month. According to the company, along with the One M7, M8 and M9 – all of which will support Android Pay across all four major US carriers – mid-rangers like the Desire EYE and the Desire 626 on AT&T, the Desire 626 on Verizon, and Desire 601 and Desire 816 on Sprint, will all support Google’s upcoming mobile payment platform. In addition to the aforementioned devices, premium handsets like the One E8 and the One Max on Sprint will also support Android Pay. The Nexus 9 tablet on T-Mobile and Sprint will also apparently support the upcoming system, according to information provided by HTC.
Android Pay will, of course, be the successor to Google Wallet, and is expected to be a serious rival to Apple Pay, which was launched by the Cupertino, California-based tech company last year at its iPhone 6 launch event. Google announced the details of its latest mobile payment platform at its Google I/O developers’ conference, which was held earlier this year at San Francisco, California. The Mountain View, California-based company is expected to officially launch the much talked-about Android Pay next week, alongside its seventh generation Nexus smartphone, which is being built by South Korean smartphone maker, LG Electronics.
A number of companies globally, including device manufacturers, technology companies, software service providers and financial institutions, all seem to believe that mobile payments is going to be the next big thing and are jumping into it headlong. Last week, British Bank Barclays announced contactless payments through its mobile app, which will complement its bPay system, launched earlier this year. Samsung has already come up with Samsung Pay, China’s largest internet company, Alibaba already has its Alipay payments platform, and India’s Paytm is drawing venture capital from some of the biggest names in the country and beyond. Now whether mobile payments will someday really be as popular as they’re expected to be is anybody’s guess, but right off the bat, Android Pay is believed to support as many as 700,000 merchant locations in the US alone. Google has also reportedly tied-up with most major financial institutions, as it tries to make its latest mobile payments platform more successful than Google Wallet.
