Google launched Android Pay in Brazil – its first market in Latin America – and the Czech Republic, as it continued a country-by-country rollout of its flagship payment service.

The company added the service would also soon be available in Slovakia and had been live in Ukraine since the start of November. Its last official release prior to these was in Spain during July.

After the Slovakia launch, Google’s footprint for the service will be 18 markets, with the company also behind India specific mobile payment service Tez.

Its appearance in Brazil is long-awaited with the company announcing forthcoming availability alongside a batch of other countries in May.

In a company blog, Google VP of product management payments Pali Bhat, outlined while mobile payments were already popular in Central Europe, in Latin America the company needed to help encourage the ecosystem using local partnerships.

“In Brazil, contactless payments are just picking up speed,” he said: “So we partnered with merchants like Ipiranga and Casa do Pao de Queijo to help us merge new experiences (like paying with your phone) with familiar ones (like buying groceries or Brigadeiros).”

“We’re looking forward to helping contactless payments become part of people’s everyday routines.”