In March, Google made it significantly more difficult (and also more secure) to pay with smartphones via the Google Pay application. While it was previously possible to pay with a locked phone up to 500, the phones now monitor the time interval since the last unlock for all payments. If it is too long, you have to re-enter your password or PIN when paying, even if your phone is already unlocked, and this often confuses the payment terminal. Many users therefore switched to paying with Wear OS watches for the sake of simplicity, but these will probably soon meet the same fate.
It started with smartphones, it continues with watches. New security features are coming to Europe, which will require frequent entry of the watch display lock even for payments of lower amounts…
On Reddit over the weekend, the first users began to point out that the watch began to require the screen lock to be entered every time a payment was made. This time too, it looks like it’s not a bug, but a targeted increase in the security of contactless payments. But, while with Androids the necessary unlocking often complicated contactless payments up to five hundred, the watch served as a functional replacement. But soon he will get to them too…
Experience from Germany shows the future scenario
…and with all the problems faced by smartphone owners. For all of them, it is enough to mention the experience of a user of a Wear OS watch from Germany, according to whom the watch has started to demand unlocking when paying more and more often in recent days. But this is not before payment, but during it, when you place the watch with the Wallet application open to the terminal. And you can do that because the watch you previously unlocked on your wrist is unlocked until you take it off. But this “longer” time is a problem for Google…
A password prompt follows, but many terminals interpret this as a payment error, so the cashier has to repeat the payment. And in the meantime, you have time to unlock the watch and put it back on. And you guessed it, the whole operation of the earlier quick “beep” will become prohibitively long. However, if you often pay up to five hundred, it may be almost easier to pull out a plastic card, which is often faster to process than paying with a smartphone or smart watch. Google promises greater security from the new rules, but this is always at the expense of convenience.
In the Czech Republic, for the time being, payment for watches works in the same form as before, i.e. at least for editorial watches with Wear OS 4, but it is only a matter of time before Google turns on new security functions when paying here. Additional security for contactless payments was also added to Czech smartphones later than in the rest of Europe…
Source: Reddit, Androidpolice, Google Support
Tags: Google complicate NFC payments watches mobile phones transaction confirmed password MobilMania .cz
