What you need to know
- Google announces that it will shut down its US-based “Google Pay” app on June 4, 2024.
- Users will lose the ability to view in-app purchase offers, and will also be unable to send, request or receive money from friends via the P2P method.
- Google is forcing users to use Wallet after the June 4 shutdown, a strategy it did in 2022 with a host of other countries.
Google is informing users that its standalone “Google Pay” app will be discontinued starting June 4, 2024.
According to Keyword’s post, the company adds that the app will disappear for all users in the US. While this might be alarming, users will still be able to use Pay’s notable features such as tap-to-pay in stores and management tools directly through Google Wallet. The company states that the procedure for using Pay to buy items will remain the same. However, there will be some changes to this service.
From now until June 4, users can continue to use Google Pay to “view and transfer” their in-app balance to their bank account. However, once the date has passed, users will still be able to transfer money to their account, but only through the website.
The end of Google Pay will also end its P2P (peer-to-peer) payment option. The announcement states that users will no longer be able to send, request or receive money from others in the US version of the Google Pay app.
Finally, finding deals was easy in the Pay app as it featured a “Trending Deals” segment. While users lose this convenient feature by closing the app, Google invites them to use Search as an alternative by typing “shop deals.”
The end of Google Pay marks the company’s push to encourage users to use Google Wallet instead. It replicates Wallet’s ability to store your cards, transit tickets, driver’s licenses, government IDs and more in one unified place.
Meanwhile, Google has taken a similar approach, removing the Pay app in favor of Wallet as early as 2022 for users in other regions. Google Pay was dropped to make way for Wallet in all countries that supported it except Singapore and the United States. Recently, Google announced that it will start supporting more digital IDs for people in more countries. The company’s product manager stated, “Digital ID will be a cornerstone for us in the next year.”