Google Pay was largely replaced by Google Wallet in 2022, but it is still operational in several countries, including the United States. Now, the search giant has announcement that Pay will be discontinued in the United States on June 4, 2024 in an effort to simplify its payment applications. After that, it will only be available in Singapore and India due to the “unique needs of these countries,” Google wrote on its blog.
As part of this deprecation, Google will remove peer-to-peer (P2P) payments, manage your balance and “find offers and deals”. For the latter, he recommends using the new destination offers on Search. Users will still be able to transfer their Google Pay (GPay) balance to a bank account after June 4, 2024 using the Google Pay website.
Google Wallet has now largely replaced GPay, with five times as many users in 180 countries, the company said. Indeed, it can handle much more than just payments: in addition to credit and debit cards, it stores transit cards, state ID cards, driver's licenses, virtual car keys and much more.
Google's payment system has been a mess over the years. It all started as Google Wallet, which was launched in 2011. At the time, it was a pay-per-click system released years before Apple Pay (2014), backed by Mastercard and retailers like Macy's.
Meanwhile, Android Pay is released in 2015then this was integrated into Google Wallet in 2018 and renamed like Google Pay. Additionally, the company originally had a Google Wallet card (killed in 2016) which was in fact a prepaid debit card usable at all retailers accepting Mastercard. Now it's all back under the Google Wallet umbrella, unless the company changes its mind again.