Google Pay has been undergoing a lot of changes lately, with the upcoming discontinuation of the web app, a redesign to make it more focused on personal finance management, and other stuff. But one thing that’s not changing is that they keep adding to their list of financial institution partners which is pretty important if they want to increase their user base. This December alone, they previously added 67 new partners and the latest news is that they are adding 18 more.
Just last November, Google added 89 financial institutions to the list of partners so that those banks and organizations’ customers can use Google Pay for their online and offline transactions. Then earlier this month, they added 67 more to the list. And now just before the year ends, just a mere 18 more have made it to end of 2020 with around 3,000 partners. While they have added major institutions at launch, it’s now time for the smaller banks, credit unions, and other financial organizations to join the Google Pay family.
Just last month, they announced that the web app version of Google Pay will stop working by January 2021. So in a month’s time, if you want to transact using Google Pay, you will have to use the mobile app. You will need it to access your account and manage payments. While you can still access the website, major features will not be available anymore, including peer to peer payments. They are also adding fees on instant money transfers when it used to be free.
The new Google Pay app has an updated UI with a focus on personal finance management as well as your relationship with businesses as well as peer-to-payments. This coming 2021 will also see a new product called Plex. a mobile-first bank account that will be integrated onto your Google Pay account. It will be initially be offered by 11 financial institutions when it launches, but no timetable has been given yet.
If you’d like to see the list of the new financial institutions, you can check out Android Police. Hopefully the bank you use is already part of the more than 3,000 if you do want to use Google Pay.
