Pay securely with an Android smartphone, completely without Google services: This is the plan being developed by the newly founded industry consortium led by the German Volla Systeme GmbH. It is an open-source alternative to Google Play Integrity. This proprietary interface decides on Android smartphones with Google Play services whether banking, government, or wallet apps are allowed to run on a smartphone.

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[–] devtoolkit_api@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 6 months ago

This is huge. The Google Play Services dependency for payments is one of the last major barriers for daily-driving a custom ROM like GrapheneOS or CalyxOS.

Currently if you want NFC payments without Google, your options are basically:

Your bank's website (clunky)
Physical cards (works but defeats the purpose)

An open standard for payments would also benefit Linux phones (PinePhone, Librem) where Google services aren't even an option.

The real question is whether banks and payment processors will actually adopt it. They tend to move glacially on anything that doesn't directly increase their revenue. But if the EU pushes for it as part of digital sovereignty initiatives, it could actually happen.

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