Google has announced that it will discontinue the Google Pay standalone app in the United States effective June 4, 2024.
The transition will encourage users to rely on the more widely-used Google Wallet for various payment functionalities, including tap and pay in physical stores and managing payment methods.
Google has also introduced several upgrades, such as improving the autofill feature on Chrome and expanding the types of passes that users can store in the Wallet.
Google Pay is widely used in 180 countries for online purchases and in-store transactions. In India, 8 out of 10 people use Google Pay for POS transactions and 7 out of 10 for online payments between April 2022 and March 2023.
However, in the United States, the app seems to miss the mark primarily due to the presence of another similar app — Google Wallet — which is used five times more than Google Pay.
Google Wallet remains the primary repository for securely storing payment cards used for tap and pay in stores. It also accommodates digital items such as transit cards, driver’s licenses, and state IDs.
Currently, the transition is limited to the United States and in countries where Google Pay is the primary choice of users, Google has changed nothing.
Google is encouraging users to migrate to Google Wallet by June 4. Until the specified date, users can continue to use the US version of the Google Pay app to manage and transfer their Google Pay balance. Users can continue these operations from the Google Pay website after this date. However, the operations, including P2P payments, will no longer be available in the United States.
To mitigate the effects of the transition, users should immediately download the Google Wallet app from Google Play, manage their cards, and access services through the Google Pay website.
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