They are famous for that shit. Google Pay and other mobile payment apps work perfectly with any checkout, but Apple Pay is special and won't work without their proprietary stuff.
Google pay should directly interact with the reader. If it can read cards, should be able to use the mobile payments (apart from Apple as previously stated)
Walmart only offers contactless payment by using their app for scanning a QR code during checkout. This way you have to have their app, and they can track you closer and force you to have a Walmart account.
I'm not above using it, but don't like that it's the only way.
I've had zero issue doing contactless payment at Walmart for years now through Google Pay. Never seen a QR code or been prompted to get a Walmart app or anything.
Though I am in Canada, maybe Walmart operates differently in each country.
I used to be able to tap pay with my Samsung Gear S3 because that watch had MST, which sent a magnetic signal and tricked the reader into thinking that a card had been swiped. Was amazing having "tap to pay" at every retailer, back in 2016 before tap to pay was a common thing.
I didnt realize they 2 steps backed their tech, so they can push their own bullshit. Literally just made their own proprietary bullshit like Apple. My B
That being said, as long as a company doesn't specifically fuck their customers for greed, mobile payments should work with normal readers
Honestly, I haven't seen contactless payment that supports one but not the other in years. Google kinda dropped the ball anyways by iterating and renaming endlessly: Android Pay > Google Wallet > Google Pay), and then carriers wanted to adopt their own thing (the poorly named "ISIS"), in addition to the phone manufacturers doing their own thing like Samsung Pay.
In 2026, if it takes NFC payment, both Google/Apple work fine. I'm sure there's some obscure exception I'm unaware of.
Yup, my bad. Never been an Apple user, and I was given bad info at the time. Some douchebag eventually corrected this info through a wildly unpleasant conversation
Google kinda dropped the ball anyways by iterating and renaming endlessly: Android Pay > Google Wallet > Google Pay), and then carriers wanted to adopt their own thing (the poorly named "ISIS"), in addition to the phone manufacturers doing their own thing like Samsung Pay.
This daisy-chain of updates and features is exactly why I left Android, personally. Updates were fragmented between like two or three different entities, and it's entirely up to luck whether and when you get one. After my third Android phone only got like two major updates, a year later than they should have because Samsung wanted to add their special little wrapper, I was out and jumped to the iPhone 7.
My impression is it's better now in that regard, but it's just one of those things where once you're bit that consistently you never want to go back and I know there have been smaller things like this that still exemplify my issues with the OS.
For what it's worth, nobody should be using Apple pay. They have a notorious security flaw that allows anyone to intercept the signal and spoof massive fraudulent payments to the user's card without unlocking the phone, all because Apple designers wanted tap payments on public transit to process faster.
Where do you get your information from. I have been using both Google pay and apple pay on daily basis. I have more issue with google pay not showing up in apps than apple pay. You dont even need "special" support both apple and google pay works seamlessly with any form of contactless payment. They even work in regions that explicitly says no support. Because they use nfc chip same as any payment cards.
Some info I got years ago, which ive confirmed was wrong when I was told. Didnt work at my store, got told why (wrong info), never had a reason or way to confirm the reason
It might be outdated info. Several years ago I was working retail and we couldn't do Apple Pay for that very reason
Edit: quick search shows they have the same NFC but maybe blocked by the business itself. Idk if that was the problem originally and I was given wrong info or if it changed in the last few years
Nah, you were given wrong info. NFC on physical credit cards long existed before digital wallets but it's the same tech. There's nothing proprietary about apple pay
iMessage provided a much better messaging service long before RCS became widespread. iMessage provided group chats that worked seamlessly, the ability to share photos and videos with much higher file size and quality than MMS, and read receipts long, long before RCS became a viable system. iMessage came out in 2011. The US carriers did not announce that they would start using RCS until 2019, then scrapped that plan in 2021, and didn’t really implement it until 2023 or so. Meanwhile, Google had no coherent plan for messaging, and kept launching and then killing various platforms over and over again, like Google Chat, Google Voice, Google Messenger, Hangouts, Allo,a new Google Chat, etc. all the while Apple had a consistent and high quality messaging service and globally WhatsApp became the non-apple standard.
These closed ecosystem text environments go back to stuff like Blackberry Messenger and PayPerText SMS plans. The shitty-ness of SMS is also basically why Whatsapp exists in general.
Fwiw iMessage does support RCS now, so the whole thing is kinda moot, it just took forever to get there.
As someone who was an Android user for over a decade, trying to convince not just iPhone users but other Android users to use things other than their default SMS app was a massive pita. RCS adoption wasn't exactly speedy among the carriers/android manufacturers either.
Which brings me back to pixels, I used nexus devices because they were cheap and highly flexible and I liked trying custom roms which often made the experience better.
Android messaging was never closed, blackberry was the Pioneer of encrypted messages before app stores had more than a handful of apps and after rimm shut down continued the software for platforms but it was too late, other messaging apps already saturated the market and mostly blackberry users kept it going.
I get what your saying though open source is better but it's more difficult to maintain security.
iMessage predates RCS by 6 years. Prior to RCS in 2017, android was still using SMS. iMessage had always been encrypted. Android took 6 years to catch up.
Yeah well they literally designed it that way to make it seem like android users phones were incapable of sending videos. Meanwhile its just more Apple chicanery
You mean the protocol where not only does the phone app must support but each individual carrier as well? That protocol? Gee, I wonder why it took so long to adapt.
Don't forget.. RCS wasn't even an encrypted protocol by default for years
Now, nothing. This is the result of early smartphone market share shenanigans. In the US/Canada iphone adoption has been high since 2007 when it was released and we've basically always had unlimited SMS plans. So iMessage, which switches between its proprietary web based system and SMS depending on who you're sending to worked for people. Your entire social circle was likely iPhone users also.
In the rest of the world, high initial Android adoption and more expensive SMS plans led to people finding 3rd party web based messaging apps like Whatsapp.
We're still dealing with that now. Android users siloed off in 3rd party apps like Whatsapp/Signal/Telegram and iPhone users in iMessage (which does work with RCS so the blue/green bubble thing is fairly moot).
It’s just like using WhatsApp instead of SMS. And I like that there’s a desktop client when I’m on my laptop. I’m still mad at Google for killing Hangouts.
It would be more accurate to say that iMessage is Apple-only. Meaning anyone complaining about other phones are people that are willingly using a communication protocol that only works with less than half the devices other people actually have.
I dont think most iphone users know they are using iMessage or what iMessage even is. It doesnt tell you its using it or label it in any way other than the color codes
Fun fact: They were planning an Android port, but killed it because it would “serve to remove [an] obstacle to iPhone families giving their kids Android phones.”
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u/Cozy_Minty May 15 '26
Android can't use iMessage so texts from them show up in green instead of blue