Allo Gets Her Payments Groove On

Yesterday marked the second day of the Google I/O developer conference, and the announcements just kept on coming.

Wednesday, the company broke the news of a major development for enabling in-app payments — a new Google Payment API that will allow merchants and developers to enable users to pay with credit and debit cards that are saved in their Google Account. This includes payment methods saved in Android Pay, the Play Store or stored within the Chrome web browser.

Building off that initial news, Google announced that, in the coming months, the company will enable U.S. consumers with debit cards linked to their Google accounts to send and receive payments using its AI virtual assistant Google Assistant.

Google gave the following voice command as an example of what’s to come: “Ok Google, send $10 to Jane for pizza.” And voila, voice-activated fund transfers on Android devices and the company’s smart speaker Google Home.

Google has yet to specify how users will go about verifying their identity for these types of transactions — whether it will require a PIN, leverage voice biometric authentication or another form of IDV.

Google also released info on additional moves in the loyalty and rewards space. The first is a new Card Linked Offers API, which will allow merchants to reward loyal customers before they enter and after they exit physical stores. Google said that QSR Panera Bread will be one of the first merchants to roll out this capability nationally.

In a nutshell, MyPanera members who save their loyalty card to Android Pay will be notified of offers via Android Pay in-store. The API comes amid the release of additional ways for Android Pay users to link third-party loyalty programs to the digital payment app.

Last up, Google announced a collaboration with payment solution company Clover to integrate Google’s smart tap NFC payment technology into Clover’s developer APIs, meaning developers will be able to build Android apps for loyalty, coupon and gift card redemption, order ahead and tap for pick up.