Securing contactless payments for Android customers

Westpac is one of the biggest banks in New Zealand. When they wanted to offer their customers a seamless, contactless payment experience on their Android devices, they asked us to collaborate. However, building a mobile wallet for payments with contactless terminals is a technically complex undertaking. Here’s what we did.  

We needed to understand how our solution was going to work within the existing payments landscape in New Zealand, with all its different banks, merchant terminals, and the technical infrastructure in between.

Along with Westpac, we partnered with Mastercard, who provided us with in-depth technical documentation. This gave us a starting point to build on through discussions with Mastercard and Westpac teams. A series of product workshops helped us define the complete user journey, including the services, technical systems, and integrations that would be involved. 

This eventually led us to a proposed technical solution: a Westpac branded Android app using the Mastercard SDK, connected to Westpac for user authentication and payment transactions. Development was split into two key areas: the Mastercard SDK and front-end. Understanding the Mastercard SDK was critical to working with Westpac while developing backend APIs.

We knew the experience had to feel secure, be simple to use and meet the technical requirements needed for approval by Westpac and Mastercard. We were also well aware that when building a payments product, there is no room for error and security is a key priority. So we designed 3 levels of security that customers could choose from, allowed them to select and add multiple cards at once, and created a full-screen UI takeover during the payment process providing real-time status of the payment or errors.

The app went live in Google Play, quickly earning positive reviews from users. Westpac team members who regularly use Android Pay and Apple Pay report that they prefer the look of Westpac Pay, and find the experience more interactive.

The new app identified and closed several customer experience gaps in financial services, in particular the service and trust gaps.