Dive Brief:
- Tech giant Google plans to retire its Google Pay app in the U.S. in June, marking the company’s exit from peer-to-peer payments, the company said in a Thursday blog post. The app will continue to be available in India and Singapore, the company said.
- Alternatively, Google encouraged users of its Android mobile operating system to use its digital wallet for paying in stores and managing payment methods. Google Wallet is used five times more than Google Pay in the U.S., the post said.
- “To simplify the app experience, the U.S. version of the standalone Google Pay app will no longer be available,” the blog post said.
Dive Insight:
Mountain View, California-based Google launched the first version of Google Wallet in 2011, according to tech news site Mashable. It then merged its wallet with an Android payment service in 2018 to create the current version of the Google Pay app, according to The Verge. Then in 2022, the tech giant created a new version of Google Wallet focused on replacing IDs, rewards cards, and other non-payment items in physical wallets.
Google Pay, which has been available both on Android and on Apple’s rival iOS system, offers peer-to-peer payments and expense tracking tools. The retirement of Google Pay leaves iOS users without an app-based way to use Google Pay, given Google Wallet is not available through Apple’s app store.
Google’s changes come as the digital payments landscape is in flux, both with respect to regulation and competition. In the U.S. and Europe, Google and Apple have faced antitrust pressures both from regulators and litigants over their in-app payment fees. Also, some rivals, including PayPal, are overhauling their approach to digital payments.
