Google Pay recently announced the redesign of the app and is now rewarding its users for making referrals and offering cashback for payments made through the app. The company announced the benefits on Twitter following the revamp of the app recently.
“The new #GooglePay is even more rewarding. You can get cashback when you pay or refer friends, shop at your favorite brands, and more.” Google Pay said.
Google Pay is a popular payment platform allowing users to shop and make payments directly from the app. It was launched in 2015 with an aim of making access to money simple and secure.
Read: WhatsApp Pay Gets Green Light To Operate In India
The latest update to Google pay is the ability for users to bank on the app, using a feature called Plex. Users can open a Plex account and operate it directly on the app. The app tracks how users spend money and sends them alerts for any fees charged. It also comes with a reminder for when bills are due.
Google Pay relies on a Unified Payments Interface (UPI),which is the same protocol that Walmart-owned PhonePe and the newly launched WhatsApp pay operate on.
Google Pay is available in the US and some Western countries and tops the payment apps in India with 75 million users. Google has said that it planning to roll out the service to other countries soon.
Whatsapp Pay was introduced mid this year after a successful pilot in India. The app is currently operational in the country as Facebook plans a global roll out. Google Pay will need to do more in terms of development to retain its clients as both apps run on the same protocol.
Read also: M-Pesa Deeply Entrenched in the Market For WhatsApp Pay To Pose Serious Competition – Analysts
Google Pay may not add much in a country like Kenya given that we already have a robust mobile payment platform, M-pesa. Experts analyzed the use of Mpesa viz a viz the entry of new payment app in the country. They concluded that Mpesa was too deeply entrenched in the Kenyan market for users to embrace a new product.
“Mpesa’s key competitive edge against WhatsApp Pay and other upcoming money apps are its deep integration and seamlessness with the existing financial ecosystem. Interoperability with the existing financial ecosystem will be critical to success of WhatsApp Pay as a challenger,” Churchill Ogutu, head of Research at Genghis Capital, said in June.
A report from the Communications Authority of Kenya in October 2020 showed that 98.8 percent of Mobile subscribers use Mpesa. Foreign payment apps like Google Pay and Whatsapp Pay would pose as great competitors but would still have to go the extra mile to win the Kenyan market.
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