Google Pay goes live in Nigeria with Mastercard cards from four banks, but few shop terminals take phone taps

Google Wallet, including Google Pay, became available in Nigeria on 28 October 2026 for Android and Wear OS users. Google's announcement says supported cards can be used for tap-to-pay in stores, in apps and online. UBA switched the service on for its cardholders a day earlier and says it was the first Nigerian bank to do so. Mastercard and the switch Interswitch say they connected several issuers to the tokenisation and processing needed for the wallet. Google's supported-card list at launch covers four banks: FirstBank (Mastercard debit), GTBank (Mastercard debit and prepaid), Zenith Bank (Mastercard credit, debit and prepaid) and UBA (Mastercard credit, debit and prepaid, plus Visa prepaid). Visa debit and credit cards are not yet listed, even though Visa issued a launch statement. Cards on the domestic schemes Verve and AfriGO, and cards from fintechs such as OPay, Moniepoint, Kuda and PalmPay, are not supported. The in-store reach is limited for now. Industry figures quoted in local coverage put contactless at around 0.1% of Nigerian payments, and many point-of-sale terminals do not read NFC. Central Bank of Nigeria rules from 2023 cap contactless payments without PIN or biometric checks at 15,000 naira per transaction and 50,000 naira a day, and no bank has said how those limits apply to wallet payments. Online, the effect may come sooner. Paystack enabled Google Pay for Nigerian businesses in September 2026 and Interswitch has supported it on its gateway since 2023. With local cards now loadable into the wallet, merchants that switch it on can offer Nigerian shoppers a tokenised, one-tap card payment instead of typing card details.