While wearables are still a niche on the payment market, the devices have their devoted fans, and you can find them in Poland. When Android Pay debuted in Poland, wearables fans had an aditional reason to celebrate - the app made it possible to use some smartwatch models to pay in stores without the need to pull out their cards or smartphones. All they needed to do was hold their watch against the terminal.

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However, Cashless readers are telling us that Google has taken that privilege away. After the latest software update the Android Pay app (now called Google Pay) stopped working on their smartwatches. We should point out that contactless payments using wearable devices were only available to a small group of users anyway - those whose devices had an NFC module and the Android Wear 2.0 operating system. If I remember correctly, only one smartwatch model meeting these criteria was widely available in Poland - the Huawei Watch 2.

I asked Google's press office why the company turned off the functionality for smartwatch users in Poland. I received a reply that doesn't explain much. - Google Pay is supported by Google on Android Wear devices only in the United States and Great Britain. We are working on providing Google Pay support on Android Wear devices on other markets, including Poland, but we can't provide a timeline for that at this point - Google's press office said.

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This suggests that until recently Google was turning a blind eye to the fact that Polish smartwatch users were illegally paying with the Android Pay app, and has decided to cut them off from the service. The company is not mentioning the reasons for the decision. My sources have unofficially told me that the app's rebranding - changing the name from Android Pay to Google Pay - had nothing to do with the company's new policy on European wearable users.