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Google shuts down GPay app and P2P payments in the US

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Re: Google shuts down GPay app and P2P payments in the US

#81
post #62
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the bright side, I think getting the money-sending integration would be more politically viable, at which point we can just piggyback the messaging on top of it.

SMS and cryptocurrency have largely solved the "send info or money to anyone instantly" problem. then entities stepped in to protect their walled gardens (governments in control of financial systems, apple, facebook, google) and viola, everything is fragmented and the problem has been unsolved. the issue was never making it happen technically, it's the entrenched power structures prioritizing money/power over actual…

I don't know what's going on in the other side of the ocean, but around here, but in the SEPA we have had instant transfers between bank accounts for a while. Some banks are trying to slow it down (like charging 1€ for transfers) for some reason, but personally I use it all the time and it's great. I'm not sure why you'd have to make up this big conspiracy theory about governments not wanting people to send money to other people.

Re: Google shuts down GPay app and P2P payments in the US

#82

I am exhausted switching services. please can we pick one and be done with it? How about adversarial integration? Why can't I send money from cashapp to venmo? Is the technology not there yet? I wish the post office was a bank and they hosted their own pay apps.

I've been using PayPal to send and receive money from friends and family since basically forever. Why anyone ever used anything else is beyond me.

PayPal is a PITA to use for things like yard sales. That’s why Venmo is winning.

Re: Google shuts down GPay app and P2P payments in the US

#83
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can there not be an app? Don't you need a place to manage your cards?

The app is, and has always been , "Wallet". The cancelled app was a peer payment thing to compete with Venmo, it wasn't about payment handling. Nor was it about NFC payment device handling, which hasn't changed either.

I distinctly remember adding it to the Google Pay app at some point in the past.

Checking my phone now, I see that i don't have Google Wallet, and instead there is an unbranded Wallet that may be on my phone? Just, what the actual F? Are those the same thing? If Wallet is a generic thing on my phone, do I want Google Wallet, which Google Pay is telling me I should be using to manage my credit cards, now?

Re: Google shuts down GPay app and P2P payments in the US

#84
Someone mentioned that in Europe you can send via IBAN to anyone. Well in Ukraine you can just use card number and send money to any bank. There is virtually no bank in Ukraine that doesn’t support this. Obviously IBAN also works for that, but nobody uses it for P2P, only to pay companies for provided services. It’s a big surprise for me that people actually need third party apps for P2P money transfers.

Re: Google shuts down GPay app and P2P payments in the US

#85
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? It only works between two Apple Cash accounts, so it can just be a book transfer within the bank maintaining these (Green Dot), no Visa required. Or do they now allow it between two non-Apple-Cash debit cards? That would indeed require some network to work across banks.

In the case of Starbucks, they're taking advantage of an API within the Messages app, so as long as a third party implements something similar to what Starbucks is doing, I assume any other banking app could do the same, like Zelle could theoretically have their app allow you to just send cash via Messages if they implement the code needed for the Messages app. Now whether or not Apple would allow it is another story…

Yeah, but the new feature presented yesterday is not that. It's just a new (and definitely useful!) contact discovery and payment request initiation channel for Apple Cash (which has been around for a few years now), as far as I can tell.

Re: Google shuts down GPay app and P2P payments in the US

#86
post #83
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The app is, and has always been , "Wallet". The cancelled app was a peer payment thing to compete with Venmo, it wasn't about payment handling. Nor was it about NFC payment device handling, which hasn't changed either.

I distinctly remember adding it to the Google Pay app at some point in the past. Checking my phone now, I see that i don't have Google Wallet, and instead there is an unbranded Wallet that may be on my phone? Just, what the actual F? Are those the same thing? If Wallet is a generic thing on my phone, do I want Google Wallet, which Google Pay is telling me I should be using to manage my credit cards, now?

As mentioned, there are multiple ways to access payment processing. Most people don't go to an app on their phone, they do it at the point of sale, likely by following a link from Drive or YouTube or TV or whatever to the web UI (pay.google.com in fact redirects to wallet.google.com).

But the core secrets management and NFC handling app on your phone is and has been "Wallet", and the fact that you claim to be confused about that now is just evidence that you've never needed to use this UI because it Just Works.

The nonsense in this thread is about this "GPay" app, which is not and never was a payments management app. It was a peer payment service, itself based on Wallet. And no one was ever confused about it until they needed an excuse to yell on HN. They just didn't use it much, I guess, so it's been cancelled.

Re: Google shuts down GPay app and P2P payments in the US

#87
post #5
post #3

I know the common joke is that Google made a mess of their messaging apps. I 100% am not clear what the correct app is to be able to do tap to pay from my phone. Kind of comical how hard that is to figure out.

This is not about tap to pay at terminals. This is about the ability to send money to random individuals, the Venmo use case.

The curve is that Google Pay is the app I used to get credit cards onto my phone way back when. Is also the app that used to come up if I wanted to select which card to tap to pay with.

Re: Google shuts down GPay app and P2P payments in the US

#89
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post gives some history and context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39474629

That's a super interesting read about Google Pay / Android Pay / Pay. Thanks for sharing. Seems like you have a portion of the world where your phone number is your identity. And other portions of the world where you're email is it.

The more fundamental issue was that the first iteration of gPay was born from Tez, which was explicitly created by Google's NBU (Next Billion Users) team led by Cesar Sengupta out of Singapore, for the Indian market with UPI compliance. It was extremely well-received and that justified the investments to port it to the US and some EMEA markets. But those markets already had Google Wallet for storing cards and because of how siloed product teams historically are at Google, there ended up being parallel tracks for GWallet & GPay.

As far as I can tell, a couple of years ago attempts were made to merge the key features of the two, at which point there was a time where US users had access to both gPay & gWallet. Now, it's come mostly full circle and Google's got most of the non-P2P features from gPay into gWallet and is deprecating gPay.

It'll be interesting to see if they add P2P to gWallet. I like to think so, but on the other hand I'm perfectly happy continuing to have a half dozen (not quite) other apps for the same purpose. CashApp, Venmo, Zelle, Paypal, not to mention the other platform apps that have P2P built in.

Re: Google shuts down GPay app and P2P payments in the US

#90
post #34

I am exhausted switching services. please can we pick one and be done with it? How about adversarial integration? Why can't I send money from cashapp to venmo? Is the technology not there yet? I wish the post office was a bank and they hosted their own pay apps.

In Europe people can send money from any bank to any bank through IBAN numbers (your bank account number) Not sure what's taking so long in the states

Sure, and that takes 24 hours to be processed (business days only). And IBANs are not very user friendly.

In the US, this is solved by PayPal. Not sure what's taking so long for europe to launch a competitor.

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