If you use Google’s products, there’s a good chance the company already has a copy your credit card details stored somewhere – in your Chrome browser’s autofill settings, gathering dust in a Google Wallet, or inside Android Pay. But soon, “over the coming weeks”, Google says it will merge the various ways it gobbles up this information under a new umbrella called Google Pay.
Image: Google
The rebrand is coming a little late in the game. Google has explored various ways of enabling digital payments since 2011, when it first released Google Wallet. Then in 2015, Google came out with Android Pay, with support from three major US carriers. It arrived in Australia in 2016. But in 2017, Google’s service trailed seriously behind its competitors – Samsung Pay and Apple Pay, according to Juniper Research and payments industry site PYMNTs.
Google says it’s worked for a year to “make these [payments] experiences simpler, safer, and more consistent”, but for now the only change we can see is a new logo, which looks like this:
Google already employed a similar logo and name for “Pay with Google“, its very similar-sounding online checkout service, which came out in October.
Google boasted on its blog that Google Pay is supported by a handful of services today, including Airbnb and Fandango.
We’ve reached out to Google to find out if it’s completely retiring the Google Wallet and Android Pay names globally, but had not heard back at time of writing.