The Google Pay app has been given a makeover, growing from a simple payments tool to a full-blown financial management service and, from early next year, a gateway to a full bank account.
Available now in the US, the redesigned Google Pay Android and iOS apps focuses less on the user’s cards than their relationships with friends and businesses.
Americans can make P2P, contactless and e-commerce payments, see past transactions, and find offers and loyalty info in a UI built around conversations.
For example, if a user needs to split dinner, rent or other expenses with more than one person, they can create a group, split the bill, and keep track of who’s paid in a single place.
The app can also understand and automatically organise spending – enabling users to search for “food,” “last month,” or “Mexican restaurants” to find the relevant transactions.
Meanwhile, Google has confirmed that next year Americans will be able to use the app to open a Plex bank account, co-branded with one of 11 different partner lenders.
Citi has shared a sneak preview of the Citi Plex Account1, with a consumer waitlist opening today.
Jane Fraser, Citi president and CEO, global consumer banking, says: “This collaboration gives us a platform to drive significant scale in our retail bank. By unlocking the power of our respective ecosystems, we can deepen our existing relationships and serve an exponentially larger and new generation of customers.”
Caesar Sengupta, general manager, payments at Google, says: “Citi customers using Plex Accounts will be able to open their accounts right within the Google Pay app and tap into all its features to save, send, spend and stay on top of their finances.”
Digital payments will be discussed in depth at EBAday 2020. For delegate passes, register now and join leaders from across Europe’s payments ecosystem as EBAday addresses ‘The Turning Point in Payments Transformation’.
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