Google’s Hands Free will bring customers a different experience

Google on Wednesday announced to the public the new app for payment named Hands Free. The company has another similar App called Android Pay, but the new one is quite different, and separate from Android Pay. Google’s Hands Free, enables customers to pay for their items in stores by simply telling the cashiers: “I’ll pay with Google”.

Although Google has publically released its new App, it is not yet available everywhere right now.
Hands Free is now being piloted in some places in the San Francisco area like some McDonald’s and Papa John’s restaurants.

Paying with voice isn’t new. Early in 2011, the payments company Square attempted a similar App called Square Wallet, which is the first try to use paying with your voice. Besides, PayPal used to attempt this function but eventually gave up. It is not a sudden for Google to release Hands Free. In Fact, Google previewed the function of paying with voice as early as May, 2015, yet this is the first time Google introduced the function on a large scale.

Hands Free is available for Android and Apple phones, using the Wi-Fi and other sensors to track the location of users. Once the customer saying “I’ll pay with Google”, the cashier will confirm the identity of the user by using user’s initials and the photo loaded onto the Hands Free app.

As its name suggests, Google’s Hands Free enables customers to pay for the merchandise without pulling out their wallets or mobile phones when shopping, which frees hands of customers. Yet personally, confirming the identity of a customer by the initials and pictures on the App is kind of unreliable. As for this issue, Google is also experiencing an in-store camera on some stores to verify the identity of the customer automatically, and the data and images of the camera will be deleted and unable to access by the stores.

Anyway, the new payment may gain lots of supporters, but whether Google’s Hands Free will have a chance to win supporters remains unknown.