Android Pay goes live in Service NSW centres

The NSW government has given the green light to Android-based smartphone payments in all 64 of its Service NSW customer shopfronts across the state.

It is boasting that the Android Pay tap-and-go capability makes it the first government in Australia to offer smartphone payments for government transactions.

The adoption of Android Pay is an early dividend from the state’s multi-million dollar investment into a new payments backend for Service NSW. The infrastructure will help it ingest transaction data from a range of agency-based systems to create a uniform inter-agency interface for Service NSW staff and customers.

It means customers will be able to use the Google-built payments platform for systems as old at the Roads and Maritime Service’s green-screen DRIVES car registration database.

The Service NSW payments system was built by Sydney outfit Azuron. It will open the way for the agency to accept PayPal, Apple Pay, and Visa payments in the future for services like licence renewals, parking fines, car registration, and birth certificates.

Finance Minister Dominic Perrottet said offering Android Pay was evidence the state government's customer service was 'keeping pace with the options people want'.

“Governments have traditionally been very slow on the uptake when it comes to new technology, whereas customers latch on much more quickly,” he said in a statement.

At the moment the payments option is only available to people who turn up to a Service NSW counter in person, but the agency is in the process of expanding it to the Service NSW online portal and app.

Today's announcement forms part of the state government’s re-energised digital strategy, which has so far included a new funding injection for Service NSW as well as a staff boost to the digital ranks of the Department of Finance, Services and Innovation, as the state works towards a goal of pushing 70 percent of customer transactions online by 2019.