Skip to main content

Android Pay tipped to launch this Wednesday

If there’s one thing you can rely on from McDonald’s — besides quickly delivered burgers — it’s a willingness to try out new technology before anyone else. This is the restaurant that pioneered free Wi-Fi, complimentary iPads, touchscreen ordering systems, and more: It’s one of the early Apple Pay partners as well, of course.

Now a memo leaked from the fast food chain has given us our clearest indication yet of when Android Pay is launching: August 26, which is this Wednesday. Google’s new mobile payments system was announced at the I/O developer conference back in May, but we still don’t have an official release date. Google has said the service will launch in the U.S. first of all but hasn’t confirmed any international expansion as of yet.

Recommended Videos

AndroidPolice has received several tips from McDonald’s staff about the memo doing the rounds, which advises employees to be ready for the new Android Pay system next week. It isn’t an exact Apple Pay clone, but the end result is the same — you swipe your phone to buy goods and services instead of relying on cash and cards. Google has said the feature is going to be available for all NFC-enabled phones running Android KitKat or above.

The memo also mentions Samsung Pay launching on August 21, whereas the correct date (for the U.S.) is September 28. While this is an obvious inconsistency, the devices supporting Samsung Pay — the Note 5 and the S6 Edge+ — did go on sale on August 21, so that might explain away the mistake.

Wednesday is usually the day Google rolls out updates to its core software suite, adding extra credence to the rumor, so if you want to stay on the very bleeding edge of mobile payments innovation then we’d advise you to clear some time in your schedule for a McDonald’s trip on the 26th. Of course, internal memos can be wrong and release dates can slip, so we won’t know for sure until Google gives us the nod.

David Nield
Former Contributor
Dave is a freelance journalist from Manchester in the north-west of England. He's been writing about technology since the…
Google just leaked images of the upcoming Android redesign
Design elements Google Material 3 Expressive.

Google is due to unveil its new "Material 3 Expressive" design system at I/O 2025 this month, but someone at the company accidentally published a blog post about it this week. It was promptly deleted but the Wayback Machine already archived it and the quick-thinking folks at 9to5Google saved the images as well.

The blog post itself was all about the research that went into the new design system for Android 16. Google spent three years carrying out various studies and experiments with over 18,000 participants, including:

Read more
Android’s desktop mode for phones is taking shape, and it looks familiar
Android 16 logo on Google Pixel 6a kept on the edge of a table.

Google’s mobile operating system comes with a hidden desktop mode that opens on an external screen, mimicking what you would get from a computing interface. However, it is buried within the developer mode, and it's far from polished to get any serious work done. 

The company, however, continues building a next-gen experience for Android’s native desktop mode. The overarching idea is to turn your phone and tablet into a desktop computing device. Mishaal Rahman, over at Android Authority, was able to enable this mode in the latest beta build of Android 16, though he warns that it might not be ready for the stable release in the coming months.

Read more
The latest Android 16 beta is hiding a significant UI overhaul
Android 16 logo on Google Pixel 6a kept on the edge of a table.

Google has been releasing various beta versions of Android 16 for a while now, but the juicy stuff is often hidden away. We have confirmation that Google is going to show us new design changes at I/O this month, and some of those changes can already be seen in the latest and final beta release.

Android Authority has done the work to enable the hidden design features in Beta 4, showcasing a range of subtle and not-so-subtle changes to the UI. Because these changes are still "off" even in the final beta, it's likely that they won't be included in the first stable release of Android 16. Instead, Google might activate them in a quarterly update sometime down the line. With any luck, they'll give us some more information during the upcoming developer conference.

Read more