Abstract

• Google’s cellular cost companies have undergone a number of rebrandings and have shifts, leading to a complicated historical past with Google Pockets and Google Pay.
• At the moment, Google Pockets primarily capabilities as a digital pockets for storing and utilizing cost playing cards, loyalty playing cards, and passes for contactless funds, nevertheless it has misplaced its person-to-person cash switch characteristic in most nations.
• Individual-to-person cash switch through Google Pay is now solely obtainable in Singapore and India; customers in different nations should depend on different companies like Venmo or PayPal.

It could be handy to make use of your telephone for cellular funds, however not when you want to pay an actual individual in your life. Google Pockets is one technique you should use for this. Effectively, it was once, and kinda nonetheless is? Perhaps.

What Occurred to Google Pay?

Google isn’t identified for neat and tidy dealing with of companies with competing options. That’s significantly noticeable within the saga of Google Pay and Google Pockets. These two model names have been used a number of occasions for various issues. It’s a bit of a mess.

In 2011, Google launched a service known as “Google Pockets.” It was a service primarily for sending cash to folks, and it included a bodily debit card that you might simply reload with cash. Earlier than telephones might do tap-to-pay, this was a neat concept–although it hardly reinvented the wheel.

Just a few years later, tap-to-pay began to take off, and Google launched “Android Pay.” This was the primary iteration of Google’s NFC cellular cost platform for Android units. Google Pockets continued to exist individually till it was absorbed right into a single service known as “Google Pay” in 2018.

Then, in 2020, Google Pay received a massive update with a handful of new, exciting features. A kind of options was the power to ship cash to family and friends, basically Google’s model of Venmo. However then, in 2022, the NFC cellular funds half was cut up out right into a separate app known as…”Google Pockets” once more.

We’re not completed but. In 2024, Google Pay was officially shut down in all however two nations: Singapore and India. All of these cool new options, like sending cash to pals, are gone. Solely Google Pockets stays as we speak.

What Can Google Pockets Do?

So, Google Pockets can’t ship cash to family and friends anymore, however what can it do? Consider it like a digital pockets, permitting you to store and use various cards and passes in your Android machine. This contains credit score and debit playing cards for tap-to-pay transactions, as well as loyalty cards, transportation passes, occasion tickets, and even vaccine data.

The first goal of Google Pockets now’s contactless funds in bodily shops and on-line checkouts. In shops, it really works with any contactless reader displaying the Apple Pockets, Google Pockets/Pay, or tap-to-pay icon. For on-line purchases, merely search for the Google Pay or Google Pockets buttons at checkout.

Google Pockets is unique to Android units. This is because of iPhone restrictions that stop third-party apps from using the machine’s tap-to-pay performance. Nonetheless, there’s not a lot useful distinction between Apple Pay and Google Pay–they’re accepted on the similar locations.

It is an actual disgrace that Google Pockets now not has the power to ship cash to folks in most nations. iPhone customers have this performance with a feature of Apple Pay called “Apple Cash.” Folks with iPhones can ship and obtain cash by means of iMessage or the Pockets app. That is an incredible comfort that Android customers now not have.

Tips on how to Ship Cash to Pals and Household

As talked about briefly above, Google Pay–the app that had the power to ship cash to folks like Venmo–nonetheless exists alongside Google Pockets in solely two nations: Singapore and India. These are the one two locations the place Google nonetheless maintains this performance.

If you’re fortunate sufficient to reside in a type of locations, here’s how you should use Google Pay to ship cash to family and friends:

1. Open the Google Pay app.
2. Beneath “Folks,” faucet the contact you wish to pay. If you happen to can’t discover the contact:
   1. Faucet “+ New Cost.”
   2. Within the search bar, enter one of many following:
      • Contact’s title
      • Cellphone quantity
      • Electronic mail tackle
   3. Choose the contact you wish to pay.
   4. On the backside, faucet “Pay.” Make sure that the recipient’s title and telephone quantity are appropriate.
3. Faucet “Subsequent.”
   • Elective: Enter a observe to explain your cost, then faucet “Performed. ”
4. Faucet the checking account you wish to pay from or add a checking account.
5. Faucet “Proceed to Pay.”

For folks in every single place else on the planet, you merely cannot use Google to ship cash on this method. The corporate does not supply any Venmo-like answer. So, that is precisely what you may want to make use of: Venmo, Paypal, Money App, and so forth.