Payments Provider PPS Launches Google Pay in the UK

European digital banking and payments provider PPS has debuted Google Pay functionality in the U.K. through challenger bank customer Monese, according to a press release.

The rollout signifies growth for the mobile wallet market, the release stated. PPS now delivers Google Pay, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay in the U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Poland and the Czech Republic.

Monese will now see its customers able to add Monese prepaid cards to Google Pay accounts, according to the release. They’ll be able to perform contactless payments with Android devices.

With the new features, PPS’s service for Monese will now also include providing Mastercard cards and direct debit capability, the release stated.

Monese initially enabled Google Pay, along with a “Smart Transactions” feature, which was part of an initiative to help improve banking access, according to the release.

“The launch of Google Pay in the U.K. is a significant step forward for PPS,” said PPS CEO Ray Brash in the release. “Since launching our first mobile payments solution in 2001, we’ve been committed to driving the migration of digital payments across Europe and beyond. To our knowledge, no other payments organization is currently delivering mobile wallet functionality on such a vast scale. We look forward to building on this early success by launching in new geographies before the end of the year.”

In October 2020, Monese adopted Thought Machine’s cloud banking platform, called Vault.

Read more: Monese Adopts Thought Machine’s Vault Cloud Banking Platform

Thought Machine CEO Paul Taylor said Monese was working in the same field as many companies that were rolling out “innovation, security and resilience to its customers, at scale.”

“Vault’s hyper-flexible core banking platform enables its clients to build and deliver banking services exactly as they want,” he said at the time. “We are excited to see Monese deliver on its vision of financial freedom using our truly cloud-native platform.”