By Hanniz Lam

Malaysia now joins 44 other countries to receive support for payments via the Google Wallet app joining both Apple Pay and Samsung Pay – launched in August this year and back in 2016 respectively – as contactless payment options.

Once users with supported cards save their details in the Google Wallet app on their Android device, including wearables running on Google’s Wear OS like the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 or the Pixel Watch, the device can then be used to make offline payments via NFC with just a tap, and even online payments for websites that support Google Pay as a payment option, such as Shopee, Airbnb, Al-Ikhsan Sports, Applecrumby and Eat Cake Today among others. Just look out for the Google Pay button and you will be able to pay for that.

“With millions of Malaysians now using their phones everyday to make payment, Google is excited to bring Google Wallet to Malaysia.

For those who are unfamiliar, Google Wallet transactions are made using an alternate card number which is device specific. This token is also associated with a dynamic security code that changes with each transaction.

Google’s current list of participating banks includes CIMB (Mastercard credit cards only), Hong Leong Bank (Visa credit and Mastercard debit card), Hong Leong Islamic (Mastercard debit card), and Public Bank (Visa credit and debit cards).

Google also said that support for both HSBC and HSBC Amanah will be added in the coming months.

Besides that, boarding passes from AirAsia and Malaysia Airlines (MAS) can also be added to the Google Wallet so you can get notifications on stuff like departure times and gate changes. For now, this feature is only supported on AirAsia, but will be added to MAS in the coming months.