Google Pay has always allowed you to make easy payments in stores or online by using your phone that is connected to your bank account, but now the company will allow you to save concert tickets and boarding passes and pay friends using the Google Pay app.
Google announced major changes to its payment service earlier this year when the company said it was rebranding Android Pay, Google Wallet and Google Pay Send, Google’s peer-to-peer payment app. Google Pay will have all the features found in Google’s other payment apps, but it will have all the features from the other apps streamlined into one app, giving users the ability to manage all of their payment services in one place.
The new app was first announced earlier this year and Google has rolled out the new app this week. Google Pay will have to compete with other apps such as Venmo and Apple Pay. Apple Pay has allowed users to save plane tickets for some time now, and many people already use Venmo as a standalone service to pay friends, but Google loyalists will appreciate that Google Pay will include all these features in one app.
Send money with Google Pay
If you already use Venmo to pay your friends back for drinks or use the app to split rent and utility payment with your roommate or partner, you’ll be able to this with Google’s new payment app. The new app will let you send or request money directly from the app and has a feature that allows you to instantly request money from up to five people at once. This feature could be handy when you’re splitting the check at brunch.
Plane and concert tickets
Google Pay lets the user save boarding passes and event tickets in the app to keep them all in one place. Mashable reports that Google Pay has a limited amount of places you can save tickets from but includes Southwest and Ticketmaster. The payment platform will likely expand its services to more ticket and airline companies in the near future.
As with many Google products, Google’s new payment app can be used on desktop, Google Android or Apple iOS apps and will sync all your information with your Google account. This might be a strong selling point for the app if you’re someone who wants to keep all your business in one place. Apple Pay and Venmo already have a huge following, but Google still has a market advantage because it already has billions of diehard users committed to the Google ecosystem already.
