No transaction fee for Google on mobile phone payments

Google’s new mobile phone payment service, Android Pay, will not garner any transaction fees from credit card companies, which may put pressure on competitor Apple to drop or lower its charges, the Wall Street Journal reported. Apple Pay, which launched last year, reached deals with big banks and other credit card issuers to receive 0.15 percent of the value of each credit card transaction, the journal said on Friday. Apple collects a half-cent per purchase on bank debit cards, it said. Google’s service will not receive any fees for the transactions, the newspaper reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation. It said Visa Inc and Mastercard Inc have made their “tokenization” card-security service free, which prevents payments services from charging fees to issuers. “There is one agreement with Visa and the banks can have confidence that there are no pass-through fees,” Visa President Ryan McInerney told the newspaper.

 The Wall Street Journal said the rules may prompt changes in Apple’s mobile phone payment deal with banks. It said some banks are not happy about sharing fees and could try to use Google’s arrangement to effect changes in Apple’s deals.

Reuters