Google Pay, the most prominent payments app using across India, has introduced new features which will improve privacy for its user base, allowing them to gain control of their own transaction data.

The new features contain a toggle on and off button, which allows users to prohibit sharing of their transaction data with Google Pay, preventing it from bringing user personalization in terms of offers and experiences on the app.

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

Conversely, the transactions deselected cannot be removed from the servers, following a government mandate, which requires transaction data to be stored by the payment service provider for at least 10 years, a Google Pay executive said.
These changes will be a part of an app update Google Pay is planning to roll out starting next week to users. While these privacy features will be shown upfront for the new users, before signing up. For old users the new features will be displayed after they upgrade their old apps.

Ambarish Kenghe, vice president-product, Google Pay states, “With 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 added, “Google Pay does not share any data of users and transactions with its parent Google and is in compliance with the Indian law.Simultaneously, Google Pay’s update on privacy features 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, include new financial management services and look at an active reward system. Media reports suggest that the company may also look to eventually offer Google Plex, its expense management service on the new Google Pay app in the US.”

Now, the company claims that it is working with the industry as well as the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which operates UPI, to make faster resolutions towards stuck payments in the ecosystem.

Ambarish states, “We are working with the industry to make resolutions fast. With four partner banks, we also monitor and look for intimation from them in case a network outage is expected. In case there is a sense that a transaction will not succeed, we stop it before it gets stuck in the ecosystem backend, or trigger a payment warning on low success rates for a bank handle.”