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Google The Almighty Buck

Google Kills Google Pay, Replaces It With 'Worse, Less Functional' Service Named Google Pay (arstechnica.com) 130

Posted by EditorDavid from the I'm-feeling-unlucky dept.
"The new Google Pay app came out of beta this week, and it marks the first step in a major upheaval in the Google Pay service," writes Ars Technica, complaining "Google is killing one perfectly fine service and replacing it with a worse, less functional service." The fun, confusing wrinkle here is that the new and old services are both called "Google Pay...." The old Google Pay service that has been around for years is dying. The app will be shut down in the U.S. on April 5...

- If you want to continue using New Google Pay, you'll have to go find and download a totally new app.

- NFC tap-and-pay functionality won't really change once you set up the new app, but the New Google Pay app won't use your Google account for P2P payments anymore. You'll be required to make a new account.

- You won't be able to send any money to your new contacts until they download the new app and make a new account, too.

- On top of all that, the Google Pay website will be stripped of all payment functionality in the U.S. on April 5, and New Google Pay won't support doing anything from the web. You won't be able to transfer money, view payment activity, or see your balance from a browser.

- In addition to less convenient access and forcing users to remake their accounts, New Google Pay is also enticing users to switch with new fees for transfers to debit cards. Old Google Pay did this for free, but New Google Pay now has "a fee of 1.5% or $.31 (whichever is higher), when you transfer out money with a debit card..."

The worst part of it all is that, like the move from Google Music to YouTube Music, there is no reward at the end of this transition.
Besides sending out an email, Google also created a support page and a notice at the top of pay.google.com, Ars Technica reports.

But they call it "yet anothre annoying transition... an occurrence that's getting more frequent and more annoying in recent years, thanks to similar Google shutdowns of Google Play Music, Cloud Print, Inbox, Works with Nest, the ongoing Hangouts situation, and many others."
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Google Kills Google Pay, Replaces It With 'Worse, Less Functional' Service Named Google Pay More

Google Kills Google Pay, Replaces It With 'Worse, Less Functional' Service Named Google Pay

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  • Sounds like... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @04:42AM (#61135256)

    it doesn't pay to get involved with Google.

    • Re:Sounds like... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @09:55AM (#61135918)

      Google Reminds me of a Drifter Dude. They type of guy who starts a job or project, does rather well in it for a while, then unexpectedly quits his job and often chances to a new career. Because the current job just got too mundane, when people say "This is good, but now can we make it better?", or the job that you did didn't get huge praises and rewards for what they had done.

      Google like to drop good ideas just because it didn't become #1 overnight. Or the project team working on such project got tired of it.

      There takes a good breed of people to maintain Legacy code. This particular breed of people gets weeded out by Googles Hiring Algorithm. Because to maintain code you need the 9-5 worker, pulling 18 hours days fixing legacy code will just be sole crushing, because you don't get creative energy empowering you. You need even tempered employees, to keep a product running, you can't have a competitive ego, you need to apply fixes to legacy code in the same methodology and design practices as it was written, otherwise you will just make a bigger mess of it later on. They will need to be paid more, to fix legacy code, you need people with experience, and the job isn't easy, because in order to fix 1 line of code you need to read and understand the code around it, and know how that 1 fix will affect the entire system. So for most cases you need to figure what was in the developers mind when the code was written and why they did it that way. This takes years of experience, so you need to hire a higher pay scale for more experience, and often get less measurable work done.

      • True. Very insightful points about how maintaining code is different.

      • Re:Sounds like... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @12:23PM (#61136626) Journal

        Google like to drop good ideas just because it didn't become #1 overnight. Or the project team working on such project got tired of it.

        The problem with this is that it makes new Google products more likely to fail. Since Google is well known for killing products, especially ones that don't get traction quickly, people will be reluctant to adopt a new Google product. When people are reluctant to adopt new products, they don't ever get traction, so even fewer people adopt the next Google product. And so on.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by laddiebuck ( 868690 )

        As a user of Google services since the 2000s, I am very very annoyed whenever google drops or changes a product I liked. I wish there was more consistency to the products.

        As someone who is also a Site Reliability Engineer at Google, I have a lot more sympathy for dropping of old products, because I can see first-hand the sheer amount of work it takes to keep old services running securely, reliably, and up to date. The thing that makes Google's services reliable and secure, even the tiny ones, is the round-t

        • Yes keeping legacy systems running isn't easy. However for a large company like Google they should account for Long term support within its business model. There is always a time for an old product to be discontinued, however it usually needs to offer your customers a way out. Vs just a hard drop.

        • I imagine Google has some valid legal and security issues they are addressing with the changeover. What baffles me is they will not explain their reasons to anybody at all. Makes them seem completely shady and underhanded instead of transparent.

          There's a reason they are changing Google Pay. They should tell everyone why.

      • There takes a good breed of people to maintain Legacy code. This particular breed of people gets weeded out by Googles Hiring Algorithm. Because to maintain code you need the 9-5 worker, pulling 18 hours days fixing legacy code will just be sole crushing, because you don't get creative energy empowering you.

        You shouldn't expect anyone to maintain other people's code 100% of the time, but you also shouldn't let people work on the new shiny 100% of the time either. Set the expectation up front that 25-50% of your time will be maintaining old code and the rest is working on new development. Also, 25-50% of your new development time should be spent on writing good documentation. If people thought they'd have to maintain their code 10 years after writing it, they might not write such shitty code in the first place.

  • long live the king!

  • Platform agnostic (Score:5, Interesting)

    by coastwalker ( 307620 ) <.moc.liamtoh. .ta. .reklawtsaoca.> on Monday March 08, 2021 @04:52AM (#61135270) Homepage

    If it only lives inside a mobile app then I am not interested. That goes for music, podcasts or anything else.

    • Re:Platform agnostic (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MrL0G1C ( 867445 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @07:13AM (#61135452) Journal

      Same here, not that I'd want to let an advertising giant hold my wallet anyway.

      I'm not sure how Google thinks it will compete with PayPal when PayPal is far more accessible.

      Why would I want to use Google Pay? I honestly have no idea. The only reason I use PayPal is because unlike my bank they don't ever decline my payments to services unlike f**king stupid incompetent Visa who literally declined my payment to a supermarket for fucking groceries MORE THAN ONCE after I'd been using said supermarket umpteen times already. No doubt visa are using 'AI', honestly AI = Artificial idiocy more than anything else.

      Given how many times Google shits recaptcha at me, I very much doubt it has any competence in knowing whether a purchase is fraud or not. /rant over

      • How well have you found Paypal to work with tap to pay?

        Serious question, I have no idea and want some useful data :)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

          I don't need a 3rd party for tap to pay, here in the UK it works fine with debit cards directly.

          • Yes, but that means if you lose your card, you can just call the CC company, have it shut off and another sent.

            If you lose your phone, you can.... umm... call your.... umm...

          • All my new debit and credit cards in the US have tap to pay.

      • FWIW, nobody I know under 35 has a Paypal account; they all use Venmo instead.

        Paypal and Venmo are the same company, but you cannot move money between accounts on those two different services.

        Venmo is mobile-app-only; it had web support but terminated it in 2018.

        That's the shift Google is trying to make here.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hawk ( 1151 )

          and zelle, bank to bank, costs 100% less than either, and you don't have to give your banking information to PayPal . . .

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Junta ( 36770 )

          So they think the only thing they need to win in the market is to do less than they were doing before, and *that* will finally draw the users? Brilliant!

      • The only reason I use PayPal is because unlike my bank they don't ever decline my payments to services

        So long as PP hasn't decided to label the service "unacceptable". There are a lot of legal products you cannot by with PP because they "might be" used in an unacceptable way.

        The opposite happens, too. Some payment processors won't accept PP for payment because, well, PP is a competing payment processor.

        Me, I'm just a luddite that won't use Google Pay for the same reason I won't use Apple Pay.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

          My bank decline payments not because they don't like the service but because they are stupid fucks who think I just stole my card from me.

    • There are other payment systems. Alipay should grab more business going forward. More merchants will avoid the 1.5% clip. Google needs to explain the downgrade. 0.9% is a better number.
  • What possible advantage or money could G get from this change ?

    • It's not Google, it's PayPal. Obviously this crapification of Google Pay was done by a PayPal mole to make their service look good.

      Speaking of which, you can do P2P payments with Google Pay? The only thing I've ever used it for is PayWave/PayPass payments, didn't even know it could do more than that.

      • Re:WHY ? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by OolimPhon ( 1120895 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @06:38AM (#61135424)

        Actually, it is possibly banking regulations. Google Pay is being used exactly the same as a credit card and someone must have finally recognized that.

        In order to satisfy regulations, they would have had to put up a 'Chinese Wall' (no, not that one!) between Google Pay financial transactions and normal Google financial transactions. Hence being forced to rewrite the app.

        • It's possible but i honestly doubt it since Google pay is not a payment processor, they rely on 3rd party processors

        • Re:WHY ? (Score:4, Funny)

          by Jumperalex ( 185007 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @08:11AM (#61135580)

          If true, why not say so? Is there any world where blaming "gubmit regulators" isn't the preferred spin over "we're changing for no reason and making it worse!"

          Mind you, I'm not arguing with you. It's a very valid theory, better than what I can come up with, but it just boggles the mind and I feel the need to yell at clouds!

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by wiggles ( 30088 )

            Partisan political stances within employees are likely preventing any such spin on this decision -- they don't want to make their favorite oppressor look bad in case it makes fans of the other oppressor right about something.

          • They generally are consulted by regulators, and have already come to a deal that they're expected to be supportive of.

            If they whine about what they negotiated, it hurts their negotiating position next time, and they'll be more likely to be publicly found to be non-compliant, and the media story to be that the old app is being "shut down," which may be an "excuse" but also makes them look shady.

    • I suspect it will get protected from liability.

      Google Pay was *too* easy. Every other payment method I used involved some sort of authentication. Enter a PIN, enter the unlock pattern, enter the CVV of your credit card, a code from SMS, even goddamned crappy big green 'Confirm' button on big green screen with nothing to verify it was done by an authorized user.

      Paying with Google Pay was literally - pick 'Google Pay' from payment methods, tap whatever button confirms selected payment method, see 'Purchase co

      • Tap and go has zero authentication that doesnt seem to be a problem in the physical world.

        • It has the very specific authentication of 'place card against the reader'. It's weak, but it's pretty hard to do unnoticed or accidentally, plus there are some significant restrictions on who can have the readers.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      They want to be a wholesaler, they don't want to deal with you nobodies anymore. They want to wholesale to resale services, they provide the support, they get hacked, they get fined and google still can suck up all your data, (SHHH in the background, via the reseller, the retailer who gathers the data so Google can mine it, quietly behind the scenes, in the dark, really fucking scummy like).

      So they are downgrading the retail face to make it more and more unusable, to get you to switch to their future retail

      • I agree G hates providing any sort of public support, but theres no reason why anybody would go thru them, any bank could provide the equivaent and save themselves the commission to G.

    • You're making assumptions there that Google want to or know how to get a benefit out of this. Google Pay has been an amazing curiosity in their suite. It seems with every attempt to modify it they do so exclusively to reduce the number of users using it.

      From explicitly banning countries in which it worked, to removing support for perfectly functional devices, to adding fees which no one would tolerate (seriously fees on debit transactions? It's not 1992 anymore).

      I mean none of this affects me in any way as

    • A fee of 1.5% of all money transacted.

    • Re:WHY ? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by larwe ( 858929 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @09:53AM (#61135916)
      I didn't realize until I'd read this article that the "new pay" is a non-US app being brought into the US. The answer to your question is probably really simple: Right now they have to support both the US and Indian pay apps. Consolidating them into one app makes "sense". And if we go a little further, we can guess that the Indian app has big growth numbers and the US one has small growth numbers because the US market is already closer to saturation. So again, picking the India-market app as the winner makes "sense".

      Until you start looking at the fact that the two apps service a completely different type of consumer with different needs and wants, of course. I got an invite to try the new Pay app a while ago. It completely baffled me. I uninstalled it within less than an hour and when it asked me why I told them that it was utterly confusing and among other things even though I was using an actual Google device, when I went to pay for something the old app was still being called up.

    • Additional fees, for one. What used to be free (debit card transfer) is now charged for.
    • Huh. I just visited the google pay webpage to get google's side of why it is good or why they are making these changes. It literally doesn't even show you a homepage, it just redirects to a login prompt.

  • Thank goodness (Score:3)

    by bobstreo ( 1320787 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @05:04AM (#61135294)

    I first read that as Google Play.

    I've never even thought of using Google Pay.

    My Credit Union seems to do most of these things with a whole lot less app garbage.

    • Does your CU app support tap to pay?

      • Does your CU app support tap to pay?

        Mine does, but so what? Are you that harried that saving the extra five seconds it takes to insert your card and wait for confirmation will make or break your day? Considering this makes it even easier for thieves who get control of your card to go on a spending spree, one would want to stay away from it.

        • Mine does, but so what?

          So what? Seriously?

          Are you that harried that saving the extra five seconds it takes to insert your card and wait for confirmation will make or break your day?

          I personally don't use tap to pay, but I know that a lot of people does, so their use case is relevant. It's not all about me.

          It's not all about you, either.

        • Well no you haven't made any kind of argument that tap n' pay is less secure than just a card. You also conveniently left out an important point in these COVID-19 times, and that's the "touching the PIN pad" part. You know? The contact-less part.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by larwe ( 858929 )
            Except that these contactless pay systems often require me to touch the PIN pad to enter my PIN, or accept or decline something, anyway. They are absolutely not contactless. It's infuriating.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by hawk ( 1151 )

              on top of that, I've had to sign a couple with the community magic pen. (most will take a fingertip, not all, but it gives the same problem!)

              hawk

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by larwe ( 858929 )
                Mmmmm, yummy. Nothing quite like that greasy, sticky sheen on the screen, keyboard and pen of a gas station POS terminal. Is that grease from the hot dog roller grill, or is it sweat? Never mind covid, I always hate touching those things, because ew.

          • We've known for at least 6 months now that COVID transmission is almost 100% through the air, and the risk of surface contact transmission is minimal. If you want to pretend to be wise on the internet, it would be helpful if you didn't stop learning.

          • Well no you haven't made any kind of argument that tap n' pay is less secure than just a card.

            No need for an argument. Anyone who knows what tap n' pay is, knows it's less secure. As you don't need any kind of verification PIN password signature etc. Just the card.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by larwe ( 858929 )
              Not universally true. I am often prompted for my PIN when I use NFC payment. I don't know what the rules are, if there is a threshold transaction amount it must vary from store to store. I've been prompted on a $5 transaction at a gas station (sodas), and not prompted on a $100 transaction at a supermarket (but I _was_ prompted on a $170-odd transaction at the same supermarket). Go figure.
              • Fair point. Some places may have very low limits.
                But the main point is many places don't and tap 'n pay is less secure by design.
              • In Europe at least, when using Google Pay, the hard transaction limit before pin being required at the vendor device is much higher. For my purposes the payment will progress without having to unlock the phone when tapping when the transaction is under 30 Euro or so. For larger transactions the limit is removed once the phone is unlocked.

                The PIN entry is deemed to be equivalently done when the phone security is deactivated by phone PIN or pattern entry. If the phone has the unlock dropped to a lower secu

            • Most U.S. credit cards don't have a PIN, and the major card networks (Visa/MC/Amex/Discover) allowed retailers to waive signatures for low-dollar transactions (usually under $100) several years ago. So tap-to-pay is functionally equivalent to a dip or swipe. If anything, tap is safer because it uses a virtual card number, so if someone is skimming the POS or payment processor, your bank only has to churn the virtual number, rather than replace your physical card.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by larwe ( 858929 )
                I thought that the virtual card number was a number _only_ usable in a tap n pay context, with a hash/signature on the total transaction amount, timestamp, and other identifiers (terminal #, vendor#, whatever) in these cases, so the transaction is non-replayable and the virtual card number is useless by itself because it can't be used in any other context than a live transaction with realtime verification.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by larwe ( 858929 )
                So I double checked this and in fact tap and pay is very much *not* equivalent to a magstripe dip. The transaction uses up a onetime token that is issued online - basically, the signing of the transaction is done in the cloud, so someone who steals your device or hacks it can't get the crypto information. Your phone carries a certain number of these presigned transaction tokens in the app (so that you can pay for something while temporarily offline). The tokens are conceptually like blank, signed checks. Ig

        • Mine does, but so what? Are you that harried that saving the extra five seconds it takes to insert your card and wait for confirmation will make or break your day? Considering this makes it even easier for thieves who get control of your card to go on a spending spree, one would want to stay away from it.

          It shields my real credit card number from the retailer and payment processor. If they get compromised, I don't have to get the physical card replaced. The bank just churns the virtual number assigned for tap-to-pay and I re-register the card. As for shopping sprees, liability is usually capped at $50 and some banks set it at $0.

    • I publish books through Google Play and whatever they've done keeps routing me to the buyer side of Play instead of the Seller side. Their help service, as usual, is useless. Does Google know what it's doing?

  • Are both dead and alive at the same time.
    But the Google Cemetery (http://gcemetery.co/) keeps on growing.

  • RIP Google Pay (Score:3)

    by Elledan ( 582730 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @06:30AM (#61135418) Homepage
    One thing which the Arstechnica article missed was that the New - and irreparably improved - Google Pay also no longer allows one to keep loyalty cards and similar in one's GPay Wallet. Meaning you have to drag those around with you again.

    All of this makes one wonder just why it is that we seem to be heading towards some kind of corporate dystopia where the ability to pay depends on what you can afford and your preferences. Don't have a SIM card because you only use your smartphone with WiFi? No GPay for you. Probably a good thing banks haven't gone mobile-only. Yet.

    Fortunately Apple Pay, Mi Pay and the others would never do such a stupid, suicidal thing, right?

  • "yet anothre annoying" EditorDavid fail (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Entrope ( 68843 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @07:41AM (#61135516) Homepage

    At this point, I think the "editors" must insert spelling errors intentionally -- this time in what purports to be a direct quote from Ars Technica.

  • It's main competitor Apple has moved into actual finance with credit cards, and basically every bank or financial service company (in Europe anyway) has moved online / onto the phone making Google Pay completely irrelevant.

    And that's before we talk about countries being explicably blocked, or Android versions suddenly being listed as incompatible.

  • Apple can do it for free because they have the banks over a barrel. They have in the US the larger customer base and in general the wealthier. They get ridiculous fees from banks.

    Just like you should get a credit card cause you'll be paying for it regardless, you should also get an iPhone because you'll be paying for it regardless.

  • What is google getting out of this? The ability to harvest even more data from its users?
  • Why would they make you create a new account? So they can tell regulators that they're separating what data they collect, so therefore the regulators don't need to worry or think about breaking Google up.
  • Google killing a product in order to replace it with another that purportedly does the same thing, but is actually worse, is Googles standard operational procedure. Google seems to be keen on vying for the title to the stupidest company in the world.

    • > Google seems to be keen on vying for the title to the stupidest company in the world.

      And yet they never seem to suffer from it. Google is like Microsoft in the 90s and 00's... powerful enough that they don't need to actually provide good service to their users in order to thrive.

  • I've seen this repeatedly - 'free' transactions, for a while. then boom, fees. Most commonly, fees for debit transactions.

    There is a reason for these, and it's not exclusively the fault of the payment app.

    Sooner or later banks, etc. figure out that these transactions need have fees assessed. And they do - to the 'processor', and the app is the processor, for these transactions, and so, 'out of nowhere', new fees. You're paying fees for debit purchases now, they are just rolled into the price you pay for go

  • If you pick Apple, bad stuff can happen since they control everything.
    If you pick Google or Microsoft, bad stuff will happen since they control everything.

  • Probably just means the old team quit, retired, or was reassigned, the code had no documentation or comments, so the new team had to start from scratch.

  • I think they could be forced to keep browser access via accessibility requirements.

  • The banks have spoken, Zelle will be the way to send payments to each other. The writing was on the wall in 2019 when Chase and WF standardized on it with-in their own app. PayPal is still kicking, and that's the only real competition. CashApp is seen as "ghetto" and scammy. The main reason is due to the transaction tracking that Zelle uses in the network, they do a bit more so they got better adoption. ApplePay/GooglePay will be just meant for NFC payment instead of a card, which still does not have mass a

  • Lets replace something that works with something that works less!

  • Google Pay was so locked down that I could seldom use it. If you're rooted, no luck. If it doesn't recognize or like something else on your phone, no luck. Early on... I have no recent experience due to those other issues... it only worked with a few banks.

    Garmin Pay (or Apple Pay) work better.

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