Payments for Google Assistant appears to be rolling out

A few weeks ago we reported on an APK teardown of the Google Assistant app that showed Google would be adding payments to Google Assistant sometime in the future. That future appears to be now, as 9to5Google is reporting that the Payments system is now in place and seems to be rolling out to some users.

The report says this new rollout began Wednesday night, as the new features weren’t available in the 6.13 version that rolled out in beta on Tuesday. To set up payments in Google Assistant, you’ll need to follow a short tutorial for setting up your delivery information and then your payment information. You’ll also need to agree to Google Payments Terms of Service.

From there, shared devices like Google Home can use the entered information to make purchases, which will bring Google a lot closer to competing with Amazon Echo and its Alexa ecosystem. While the infrastructure for making purchases seems to be in place, there’s no way to actually buy anything using Google Assistant at the moment.

Google will have to open the Payments API up for third-party developers to begin using the feature, but this is proof that you’ll soon be able to buy things using Google Assistant.

[Image credit: 9to5Google]