Android Pay has seen its fair share of attention over the last couple of days, having been updated to include ATM access for Bank of America customers, and making it possible for Android Pay to be used as a form of payment on mobile websites. Today it was also discovered that users who have updated their software to the third developer preview of Android N can now use Android Pay thanks to the approval of the Compatibility Test Suite. Now, Google has just highlighted a set of new APIs it’s rolling out for Android Pay to make things easier for developers, specifically making it easier for developers to integrate Android Pay into their applications if they haven’t already done so.
A big part of these improvements includes the compatibility of Android Pay with Instant Apps which opens up the ability for one-tap purchases using Android Pay as the form of payment. This means faster checkouts and less time fiddling with payment so users can get on to what they were doing before placing an order. With the release of the Android Pay API to developers, the app integration also allows them to sell physical goods and services inside of apps as long as they sign up at the Android Pay developer web portal. Google notes that they have been teaming up with payment processor globally so that app integration is possible within a few hours.
Although it was already briefly mentioned yesterday in the post about ATM access with Android Pay, the PaymentRquest API is part of the enhancements as a whole that are rolling out to Android Pay for developers, which aims to improve the overall experience. Also briefly touched on recently was the inclusion of loyalty cards and rewards in the Android Pay app as part of the latest update. This function is opened up by the Save to Android Pay API, and with this developers can add deep links to initiate a single tap process for adding in loyalty, rewards, and gift cards to the Android Pay app. Google also explains that the deep links can be added to various places like emails and notifications, which should make things extremely simple for users if there is a specific loyalty or gift card that they want to add into Android Pay.