Google Pay unveils new features to enhance user privacy

Bengaluru: Google Pay, the payments app of Google has introduced features designed to improve privacy for users, allowing them control over transaction data.

The features include a toggle on and off’ button which allows users to prohibit sharing of their transaction data with Google Pay, preventing it making personalised offers.

According to Google Pay India, users can also deselect transactions they wouldn’t like Google Pay to use for providing a ‘personalization experience’.

However, the transactions deselected cannot be erased from the server’s memory, following a government mandate that requires transaction data to be stored by the service provider for at least 10 years, a Google Pay executive said.

These changes will be part of an app update Google Pay is planning to roll out starting next week. The privacy features will be shown upfront for new users before signing up for the app. For old users the new features will be displayed after they upgrade their old apps.

The payments platform will not be making any changes to its terms and conditions in India with this update, a Google spokesperson confirmed.

“With the ‘toggle on and off’ users have to make a hard choice on personalization and therefore we are providing an extra layer of flexibility to deselect only certain transactions. We are thinking of privacy in a granular way and respect the choice of the users to help us provide the best experience to them,” Ambarish Kenghe, vice president-product, Google Pay, said in an interaction.

Kenghe said Google Pay does not share any data of users and transactions with its parent Google and is in compliance with Indian law. Google Pay’s update in India coincides with its new app in the US, which came out of beta last week, as Google plans to kill the old Pay app in the US on 5 April.

The new Google Pay app in the US is expected to focus on user payments, with financial management services and an active reward system. Media reports suggest the company may eventually offer Google Plex, its expense management service, on the new Google Pay app in the US.