WHAT MAKES ANDROID PAY TICK?

Between the mainstream press and the countless blogs, pulling off any sort of surprise — like, say, an early drop of a major product — is nearly impossible. But Google, with its freshly minted Android Pay, actually managed to do it twice in the space of a week.

The first early drop was yesterday’s official announcement that Google’s mobile payment system will be available to Android device owners whose phones run operating systems KitKat and forward. Google’s Director of Product Management Pali Bhat told MPD CEO Karen Webster that with such extensive backwards compatibility (KitKat was released in 2013) seven in every 10 Android-device owners in the U.S. will soon be able to pay the Android Pay way.

“It is a huge number of devices,” Bhat told Webster in an extensive debrief prior to the launch of Android Pay. “We wanted it to work on as many devices as possible. The best experience is going to come via Android M as you would expect, but openness is a core value of what Android Pay is about.”

Something that appears to be more than just a Google/Android Pay talking point.

Bhat and team were remarkably undisturbed by the fact that yesterday’s official launch was upstaged about a week ago by the intrepid (and impatient) in its user base. They cleverly figured out that, though the app wasn’t yet visible in the Google Play store, the infrastructure was available through the latest update and therefore accessible with some minor tinkering.

So – voila – Android Pay launched for those very early adopters last week.

“[It was available yesterday] unless you are a developer and hacked into the solution,” Bhat joked with Webster. “We are quite glad they were able to do it, it shows interest and excitement in the marketplace.”

More importantly and perhaps more subtly, Bhat’s reaction also underscores a core principle that he and the Android Pay team say sets them apart from the other “Pay” players in the ever-expanding mobile payments ecosystem.

IT MAY BE CALLED ANDROID PAY BUT IT’S REALLY NOT ABOUT PAYMENTS

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After listening to Bhat describe the vision, and even hint a little at the roadmap for its future, Android Pay is intended to be something much bigger than “just payments,” and to some extent, something that even the team can’t yet fully imagine or even articulate. A key tenet of Android Pay is, in fact, a hallmark of Google itself – an expertise in creating and nurturing ecosystems that inspire and drive innovation throughout them.

And that’s how Bhat and the team describe Android Pay – the foundation for creating a host of commerce experiences through which payments can be embedded, limited in scope only to the imaginations of those in the ecosystem who wish to play along.

Thinking of Android Pay as a payments application first would have, they say, driven them down the same path that they feel impeded their ability to be successful in their prior attempts at mobile payments. Of course payments is what Android Pay enables, but isn’t what drove its design, its operating principles or even how it plans to make money. In fact, Android Pay isn’t about making money yet. That part is still TBD. But when they do decide, they say one thing is totally off the table – monetizing transaction data.