Google is sending another app to the heavens. This time it’s the long-standing Google Pay app, which users in the U.S. won’t be able to use from June 4th 2024.
Google said that the planned move is to simplify its payments options. The company wants to shift users over to Google Wallet, which is vastly more popular than the Pay app (Google says it is used five times more in the U.S.).
“Google Wallet continues to be the primary place for people to securely store payment cards used for tap and pay in stores, alongside other digital items like transit cards, driver’s licenses, state IDs and more. To simplify the app experience, the U.S. version of the standalone Google Pay app will no longer be available for use starting June 4, 2024,” Google product manager Joris van Mens posted on The Keyword blog.
This means that U.S. Google Pay app users will have until June 4th to transfer their balance to another bank account. After that, users will have to move around their funds via the Google Pay website instead. Peer-to-peer payments will also stop working on June 4th, alongside access to in-app deals.
Google says that if you’re waiting for cash-back from an in-app deal and the June 4th deadline has passed, the usual reward payment timelines still apply. On deals, it looks like Google is shuffling people over to Google Search instead of porting them over to the Wallet app.
It’s not exactly clear what will happen to the Google Pay app after June 4th, but it looks like it will simply be a window to view your balance, but it won’t be operational. To be completely safe, it’s worth transferring out your balance to another account before the deadline. Check out Google’s guide on how to do that here. For users in Singapore and India, the app will still be fully functional.
After trying several mobile payment methods over the years, it looks like Google is settling on Wallet being the primary and default Android payments app. It doesn’t support sending and receiving money, nor does it provide cashback on purchases. The app is a simple tap and pay vehicle, while also storing payment cards, loyalty cards, transit passes and some government identification. We will have to see if Google adds more features to Wallet in the future, but after a decade of creating and ditching different payment models, the simple nature of Wallet is entirely intentional and likely permanent.
