Recently, Google Pay has launched international money transfer ties with remittances firms Wise and Western Union for users of its U.S. payments app, the companies said.

Google Pay users in the United States are now able to transfer money to app customers in India and Singapore, with plans to expand to the 80 countries available via Wise, and 200 via Western Union by the end of the year.

Google's venture in the 470 billion remittance market marks an additional step by the technology company to enlarge its financial services contribution, ramping up rivalry in the digital payments sector.

London-based Wise was introduced in 2011 with the aspire of production international money transfers cheaper and easier, though Western Union residue a market leader in remittances, with an extensive global network of physical locations.

Their partnership with Google Pay, which has 150 million users in 40 countries, comes as the COVID-19 epidemic has led to a rumble in online payments, but an expected drop in generally remittances flows. The money drifter workers sent home is conventional to have declined 14 percent from 2019 due to deteriorating economic conditions and employment levels in migrant-hosting countries, according to the latest estimates from the World Bank.

Josh Woodward, director of product management at Google, states, "Even with COVID a lot of people have relocated around the world and we wanted to focus on how we can help facilitate these payments. Our goal for this year is to work with Wise and Western Union to roll this out for the countries they support."

The Silicon Valley technology company redesigned its U.S. payments app in November, introducing remunerated promotions to the service and opening a waitlist for bank accounts being launched next with several lenders.

Ant Group, Samsung Electronics Co, Apple Inc, and PayPal Holdings Inc also offer mobile wallets aiming to be hubs for services ranging from cross-border payments to credit.