Google wants to provide its users a lot of services or let’s say almost every major service, which is why the company has also chosen to provide solutions like mobile payments. In a promising market like India, the company is looking to provide services from all angles possible in order to maximize and keep its user base, given WhatsApp too is now allowing sending payments right from the app.
FYI, Tez is the known mobile payment app that is owned by Google in India, but the company has promised to bring along support for Google Pay, which is the main mobile payment service across the globe. However, in another interesting development, it seems Google wants to add direct mobile money transfers to the Contacts app.
It’s worth noting that a few weeks ago, AndroidPolice had reported that the Google Contacts app had received the ability to send money through Google Pay for few people, but today, we spotted the feature on our own Galaxy S9 Plus, where the ‘Send’ button showed up in the contacts app (v2.5.4).
Mind you, we don’t have a Google Pay/Wallet app installed on our Galaxy S9+. Even more interesting fact is that our Galaxy S9+ doesn’t have the Tez app installed, which means Google is probably relying on the Play Services app to test this feature. We say “test”, because the feature is no longer available now, as can be noticed from the screenshots — one with the new UI was taken at 5.35 P.M., while one with the old UI was captured at 6.49 P.M.
From what we can gather, Google must be testing the so-called Send icon (image above) for some users in India, for a brief period of time as it’s gone now, but might bring back the feature soon under wider rollout, maybe in the next few weeks (or months at best).
Tapping on this Send icon throws the pop-up and dialog that you see in the screenshots below. You get to pick up between the mobile numbers and email address of the contact, and then specifying the amount you want to transfer to that contact. You can also add a debit or credit card of your choice when you tap on ‘ADD DEBIT CARD’ text at the bottom (couldn’t take a screenshot of it because System blocked it).
It is on the latter screenshots that we can tell Google may be planning to integrate Pay services into the Contacts app, where users can send money without necessarily having to go through Tez or Google Pay app itself. Whether this is specific to India or not is still unknown, but do let us know if you’ve seen it via the comments section below.
With WhatsApp already beta testing the payments feature in India, it was about time Google moved quickly in this large country where Google has lots of users.
