Tech giant Google announced another milestone in the mobile payment industry—this one without the hassle of taking out wallets or even smartphones.
To use this technology, customers will have to download the Hands Free app on their phones. When making a purchase, they will just have to say their name to the cashier and a Bluetooth sensor will detect the installed app. The customer will then be billed through a notification, according to Time.
Google said that pizza chain Papa John's and fast food juggernaut McDonald's will soon be testing Hands Free in the Bay Area.
But Google stressed that this payment service is still at the experimenting phase, calling it the "early prototype stage," according to The Wall Street Journal .
"We wanted to ask ourselves could we create payments schemes that don't require you to take your phone out," Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google's Ads and Commerce chief, said about Hands Free at its annual developers' conference held in San Francisco.
A Google spokeswoman said that Hands Free is different from Android Pay, which runs on different technology.
Time noted that Google is not the first company to attempt this kind of payment. PayPal made the same technology in 2013 using a Bluetooth device retailers know as Beacon, which is placed in stores.
