Sundar Pichai, Google's senior vice president of product, sat down with Bloomberg's Brad Stone on stage at the Mobile World Congress Monday in Barcelona, Spain, and announced Google will soon launch its own payment system called Android Pay.

Pichai confirmed that Android Pay is an API layer of Android. He said anyone will be able to build into Android Pay APIs, and it "will have NFC components." NFC is "near field communication," which is technology that enables devices to establish radio communication with each other by close proximity or touching them together.

Android Pay will be a platform that will enable developers to build payments into their apps. It will not exist as a separate app like Wallet; Wallet will use the Android Pay platform. The OS-level service will make it easy for retailers and app makers to allow consumers to purchase things using an Android device.

How Android Pay Works

Tokenized card numbers will be used for secure one-time transactions. If a cybercriminal hacks into the database of a retailer where you've used Android Pay, he will nab a one-time-use number that's no longer validated. Card data will be stored locally. You will be able to use Android Pay without a cellular connection. In this regard, it is similar to the Apple Pay system on the iPhone 6.

Google Wallet is not going away. It will leverage Android Pay as a payments source.

Android Pay will eventually support biometric security measures, like fingerprint scanning.

Samsung Pay, which will launch this summer in the U.S., is not necessarily a competitor, according to Pichai. He said that Google plans to work with Samsung on ways to align the two products, and Google is not looking to exclude it as an option of its customers. "Users love choices," he added.

A release date for Android Pay has not been announced.

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