Google Pay newly available in Slovakia

Google Pay is a way to pay with a smart mobile phone, ideally with Android 4.4 OS and above, which you can use to pay in shops in Slovakia from March 2018. This payment is currently supported by the Slovak banks: Slovenská sporiteľňa, Poštová banka, J&T Banka, mBank and 365 today's bank.

The main condition for it to work is an NFC chip, which must be built into your smartphone. Another condition is the Google Pay app, into which you need to load the payment and credit details of the cards you want to use. Users who have already purchased any app on the Google Play platform using their payment card have an advantage. Your card is then already connected and paired with your Google account, and setting up the Google Pay app itself is then a matter of just a few seconds.

The advantage of the payment process itself is then the fact that for payments up to EUR 20 there is no need to unlock the phone - you just hold it up to the contactless terminal. Conversely, for payments over EUR 20 you do need to unlock the phone and confirm a previously set confirmation password (fingerprint, gesture, PIN code or other forms of security).

Another advantage lies in the fact that payments can also take place in offline mode, because Google Pay generates several payment keys in advance, but offline payments cannot be used indefinitely. When the supply of keys runs low, you need to be online so that Google Pay can generate the keys again. Specifically, this is roughly 5 to 10 keys.

You can also load more than one card at a time into the Google Pay app, but before each payment you can choose exactly one from which the payment will be made. Currently, the Google Pay service can be used to pay at more than 43,000 locations across Slovakia. The question therefore still remains as to when Google Pay services will be available in the Czech Republic as well.