Starting Today You Can Use Android Pay at More Than 1 Million Locations

Starting today Google is rolling out its second attempt at cracking the mobile payments market with Android Pay, their much anticipated follow-up to Google Wallet which looks to take on competitors such as Apple Pay and Samsung Pay (currently in beta). The new service will feature similar payment options as Google Wallet and Apple Pay featuring support from many banks and credit card companies and as such is already supported by over 1 million locations in the U.S.

According to Google's official announcement, Android Pay works with all NFC-enabled Android devices (running KitKat 4.4+), on any mobile carrier, at every tap and pay ready location across the US. Android Pay will support credit and debit cards from the four major payment networks: American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa. These cards are issued by many of the most popular US banks and credit unions, including American Express, Bank of America, Discover, Navy Federal Credit Union, PNC, Regions Bank, USAA, and U.S. Bank. Wells Fargo will be available in the next few days, Capital One and Citi are coming soon, and we're adding new banks all the time.

Android Pay boast several new security features that pick up where Google Wallet left off, most notably  the use of industry standard tokenization. Through tokenization your real credit or debit card number isn't sent with your payment. Instead, a temporary virtual account number is used that prevents retailers from ever seeing or storing your actual account information poviding an extra layer of security.

As soon as you make a purchase, you’ll see a payment confirmation that shows where a given transaction happened, so it’s easy to catch any suspicious activity. And if your phone is ever lost or stolen, simply use Android Device Manager to instantly lock your device from anywhere, secure it with a new password, or even wipe it clean of your personal information.

Later this year, Android Pay will be updated to allow you to do mobile checkout when buying items in shopping apps, and some merchants will even let you transmit your loyalty cards electronically. So you can pay and get your points or discounts all with one tap of your phone.