After activating the “Samsung Pay” and “Apple Pay” services for electronic payment, it looks imminent that Kuwaiti banks are close to launching “Google Pay”, reports Al-Rai daily. In this regard, the daily has learned from sources that the Central Bank of Kuwait has granted at least 3 banks, including Kuwait Finance House, licenses to activate the “Google Wallet” application, which is a method of paying, saving and using cards, tickets, keys and identification cards, similar to the two “Samsung Pay” services and “Apple Pay” available in Kuwait. The sources expected that the licensed banks would start activating the new payment service at the beginning of next March, after supporting their customers’ cards to be able to activate this service, as they moved in the past period to prepare all their regulatory and technical needs to launch the service for their customers, indicating that after obtaining the approval of the regulator, these banks have agreed to complete the requirements for equipping point-of-sale devices with their joint automated banking services company, KNET, to receive payments using the Google Pay system.

Mechanism
The sources pointed out that unlike the mechanism for activating the “Samsung Pay” and “Apple Pay” services, activating “Google Pay” in Kuwait will be without collecting any fees from the banks activating the service, which makes the banks’ request for regulatory approvals to launch the service in Kuwait limited to the CBK only without the need to obtain the approval of the Ministry of Finance. She pointed out that the “Google Pay” electronic payment service will be directed to all communication devices that operate on the “Android” system, including “Huawei” phones, “Google Pixel” and other compatible devices that run on the “Chrome” operating system.

The sources indicated that the segment of customers that use these devices in Kuwait is limited, but the banks’ move to activate the “Google Pay” application comes within the framework of their competitive endeavor to provide advanced payment services that include all their customers, which guarantees them a comprehensive payment experience. With the official launch of the service in Kuwait, customers who have accounts in Kuwaiti banks that have activated this service can use Google Pay to pay through any point of sale of KNET, which is estimated to be 90,000 devices in Kuwait.

The sources confirmed that the banks that activated the “Google Pay” service will provide the highest levels of protection for the users of the application, while emphasizing the importance of following all procedures that ensure the protection of their devices and accounts from hacking and fraud, by activating the protection methods on their devices. She explained that the launch of global electronic wallets for bank cards in Kuwait, such as “Google Pay” and before that “Apple Pay” and “Samsung Pay”, comes after completing all the requirements and conducting the necessary banking tests for the service, as it will be available to all customers of ready banks to support the cards of their customers who are phone users and watches that operate on the “Android” system to implement and accept their electronic payments.

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