Google Pay, the search giant’s payment service that allows users to easily send money to friends and shop at participating merchants, is shutting down in the United States on June 4th, 2024. The move comes as part of Google‘s efforts to simplify its payment offerings and consolidate them under the Google Wallet brand.
Launched under the name Google Wallet back in 2011, the service originally focused on contactless in-store tap-and-pay transactions in partnership with card issuers like Mastercard. Over the subsequent decade, it was rebranded to Android Pay in 2015 before becoming Google Pay in 2018. The latest iteration brought peer-to-peer payments and loyalty programs under the same umbrella.
Now, after scaling to over 150 million users across 30 countries in its current Google Pay form, the company is winding down stateside operations to eliminate redundancy between it and the revitalized Google Wallet app. As of June, Google Pay will only remain functional in India and Singapore “unique needs in those countries,” according to Google.
Google Wallet itself was relaunched last year with greatly expanded capabilities beyond just payments, allowing users to store everything from credit and debit cards to transit passes, vaccine cards, and driver’s licenses. This broader set of features has quickly made it the go-to app for Google’s payment and identity offerings with over 5X as many users as Google Pay had prior.
As part of the transition process, Google Pay users in the US will lose access to peer-to-peer payments, the ability to manage their balance within the app, and offers/deals discovery. Money stored in Google Pay balances can still be transferred to external bank accounts after services wind down in June.
The winding down of Google Pay marks the latest evolution in the tech giant’s convoluted history in the payments space. After launching Google Wallet nearly 12 years ago, the company rebranded it to Android Pay, integrated it with Google Wallet under a unified Google Pay identity, and has now brought back the Google Wallet brand under the new expanded vision beyond just payments.
While the branding has constantly shifted, the goal has remained the same – making payments and financial services seamless across Google’s suite of products. And with the new Google Wallet now established as the flagship app for that purpose, the retirement of Google Pay seems to just be the next step on that journey for the tech giant.
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