Francois Wouts’ solutions helped answer this. Thank you Francois…
I searched the logs with keyword ‘Places’ and found that Places API was indeed throwing an exception. It expected the com.google.android.geo.API_KEY within the <application> tags in the Manifest.xml.
I had changed to com.google.android.geo.API_KEY in the <activity> tag and not the one in the <application> tag.
Now changed to com.google.android.geo.API_KEY and removed the same lines from <activity> tag, and got it working. Feel like an idiot for not working this out by myself..
The meta-data tag should read
android:name="com.google.android.geo.API_KEY"
It should be within the<application>tag in the Manifest.