Hume Bank adds Google Pay support, one step closer to saying goodbye to the wallet

Its the tail end of 2019 and my bank, Hume Bank, just added support for Google Pay. This adds to a fairly lengthy list of Australian financial providers that now support the tap and pay functionality from your phone.

That list now includes all 4 major banks – Commonwealth Bank, NAB, ANZ and Westpac, as well as a number of smaller banks. Customers from St.George, BankSA, HSBC, Macquarie Bank, Bankwest and Bank of Melbourne are all able to use Google Pay and until today, I’ve been jealous.

I’ve been paying for goods at retail outlets using PayWave basically since I could. Now with the addition of Google Pay, I’ll be using my phone to pay for goods and the option of cash just feels completely antiquated.

While Hume Bank added Google Pay just today, I’ve already enabled it for my account. This process was easy, just fire up the Google Pay app, add your card and then verify with the bank.

When it came to that verification step, it meant a phone call and despite it being 5:30PM, a Hume representative answered, verified who I was and approved the Google Pay setup on my account in just a couple of minutes.

Google Pay actually supports plenty of loyalty cards, of which my big two are the Woolworths Rewards and Boost Juice. Now I’m armed with tap and pay for transactions on my phone, along with loyalty programs, it feels like the last remaining use for my wallet is my license.

Thanks to the new car in the garage, I’ve already ditched the car keys this year. Recently NSW started offering digital IDs to residents, so I just need Victoria to hurry up and enable digital licenses, to really feel like I’m living in the future and leave my wallet at home.

If you bank with Hume Bank, you got the option to enable Apple Pay earlier in the year, but if you’re in the Android camp, head to https://humebank.com.au/gpay for more info.