Following the launch of Google Pay in November, which saw the service expand into personal funding, the company today is creating a new feature aimed at making Google Pay more a part of its users’ daily lives.
With an update, Google will include new options for getting grocery savings, paying for public transit and categorizing their spending. By partnering with Safeway and Target, Google Pay users will now be able to browse their store’s weekly circulars that display the latest deals. Safeway is bringing more than 500 stores to the Google Pay platform, and Target stores will offer similar features nationwide. Google Pay users will be able to choose the proposed deals for later access.
And soon, Google Pay will notify you of weekly deals if you’re near a partner store, if the location is enabled. Another update expands Google Pay’s transit features that already support the purchase and use of transit tickets across more than 80 U.S. cities.
This follows Apple Pay’s recent addition and the overwhelming welcome support for the Bay Area Clipper card. The company is integrating with Token Transit to expand transit support to smaller cities in the United States. Soon, the Google Pay app will allow Android users to access transit tickets from the app’s homescreen via a “Ride Transit” shortcut. They can then purchase, add or top up the balance on the transit card. Once purchased, you’ll be able to hold your transit card to a reader – or show a visual ticket if there are no readers.
The ultimate feature is designed to use Google Pay to manage their money. With last year’s reconstruction, Google partnered with 11 banks to launch a new type of bank account, known as Plex. It only serves as a front-runner in accounts hosted by partner banks such as Google’s App City and Stanford Federal Credit Union, competing with the growing number of mobile-digital banks. As part of that experience, Google Pay users will now have better access to their spending behavior, balance, bills and more through the “Insights” tab. Here, you can see what your balance is, what causes bills to come, get alerts about larger transactions, and track expenses by category or business.
Google is now automatically classifying transactions, meaning you’ll be able to search by generic terms (like “food”) as well as specific business names (“Burger King”), Google explains. These features are part of Google’s plan to use the payment application to give users more data access, which could be targeted with offers from Google Pay partners.
