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Enhancing Android Pay APIs

Posted by Pali Bhat, Senior Director, Product Management

Today, we’re enhancing our APIs, making it easier than ever for the developer community to integrate with Android Pay. With just a few lines of code, you can enable quick and seamless checkout to help increase purchase conversions and ongoing engagement.

Improve conversions within apps

We’ve been working with popular apps such as Airbnb, Yelp Eat24, Kickstarter, TicketMaster, Uber and many others to bring the ease of speedy checkouts to apps. We also want to make the same great in-app experience available to all developers, big or small. So we’re taking a few steps:

• Earlier today, we announced Android Instant Apps, which gives users the ability to pay using Android Pay with a single tap, without the friction of getting a user to install the app to complete their transaction. 

Example of Android Pay in Android Instant Apps

• We’re opening the Android Pay API to all developers selling physical goods and services in markets where Android Pay is available—just sign up at developers.google.com/android-pay/
• We’ve teamed up with payment processors globally so developers can integrate Android Pay with their Android apps in just a few hours.

Enhance mobile web payments

Many users continue to make purchases on mobile sites. But buying something from a website on your phone can be clumsy and cumbersome, which results in much lower conversion rates on mobile sites than on desktop sites.

To make painful web checkout forms a thing of the past, we will be launching PaymentRequest, a brand new web API that we are developing together with Chrome and standardizing across browsers through W3C. Android Pay will be part of this API to allow users to pay on mobile websites as they do in-store and in-app.

Example of Android Pay in PaymentRequest

Drive deeper engagement

Thanks for all the great feedback on our Save to Android Pay API since launch. You spoke and we’ve listened: We think you’ll be thrilled with the latest improvements to the Save to Android Pay API. The following enhancements help developers build stronger loyalty and engagement with new and existing customers:

• Enable users to add offers, loyalty cards and gift cards in the Android Pay app with the tap of a button. Simply add a deep link to an email, SMS message, push notification or within an app and you’re all set.
• Enroll new customers into a loyalty program in a variety of ways with the new simplified sign-up feature. Customers can sign-up either in store via a NFC tap or through a sign-up page linked from an Android Pay transaction notification.

Example sign-up feature for Walgreens Balance Reward®   via Save to Android Pay from transaction notification

We believe that mobile payments can make for a better, more secure shopping experience - so were in this together for the long haul. We’re building a robust Android Pay ecosystem, one that’s open and scalable, to enable developers to drive mobile payments - and their businesses - forward. Were very excited for the road ahead and we hope you are too.

To learn more about Android Pay and share your feedback, visit our developer pages.

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Enhancing App Security on Google Play

We’re constantly investing in new tools and services to help developers build secure Android applications. This includes the application sandbox and Security APIs in the platform, Security APIs in Google Play Services, and even open source testing tools. Last year, Google Play also helped developers enhance the security of their applications by looking directly at the code they’ve written and offering suggestions for improvements.

The Google Play App Security Improvement Program is the first of its kind. It has two core components: We provide developers with security tips to help them build more secure apps, and we help developers identify potential security enhancements when uploaded to Google Play. This week, to help educate developers, Kristian Monsen, one of our engineers, gave a presentation about security best practices at the Samsung Developer Conference. And in 2015, we worked with developers to improve the security of over 100,000 apps through the program.

Before any app is accepted into Google Play, it is scanned for safety and security, including potential security issues. We also continuously re-scan the over one million apps in Google Play for additional threats.

If your app is flagged for a potential security issue, you will be notified immediately to help you quickly address the issue and help keep your users safe. We’ll deliver alerts to you using both email and the Google Play Developer Console, with links to a support page with details about how to improve the app.

Typically, these notifications will include a timeline for delivering the improvement to users as quickly as possible. Applications may be required to make security improvements before any other app updates can be be published.

You can confirm that you’ve fully addressed the issue by uploading the new version of your app to the Google Play Developer Console. Be sure to increment the version number of the fixed app. After a few hours, check the Developer Console for the security alert; if it’s no longer there, you’re all set!

The success of this program rests on our partnership with you—the developers of apps on Google Play—and the security community. We’re all responsible for providing safe, secure apps to our users. For feedback or questions, please reach out to us through the Google Play Developer Help Center. To report potential security issues in apps, please reach out to us at security+asi@android.com.

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