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Google granted e-money, payment license to operate in Europe

As evidenced by the last several years, technology is disrupting the commerce industry. One area of interest is e-money, with Google just granted a Payment License that will allow it to operate throughout the European Union.

As reported by Bloomberg this morning, the Google Payments division received an e-money license from Lithuania that will allow it to operate financial services across the European Union. Over the past three months, the Baltic country’s central bank has issued 39 similar approvals.

This Payment License allows Google to process payments, issue e-money, and manage virtual wallets, including electronically storing and transferring customer funds. The company confirmed the application to Bloomberg, noting that it has “ongoing discussions relating to projects all around Europe.”

Google is actually one of the last tech giants to acquire a permit in Europe as all expand into financial services. Facebook acquired approval in 2016, while Amazon has a similar one.

At the moment, Google’s financial efforts are centered around Google Pay. The company in January announced a merger of Google Wallet and Android Pay, with the unified payment solution getting more features throughout the year. Integrated into Messages, other functionality besides NFC payments and P2P transfers is support for transit, boarding passes, and movie tickets.

Another big move in August involved rebranding Tez for India and Southeast Asia into Google Pay for a truly unified offering from the company. Google is also working to make Pay easy to integrate with third-party apps and services.

The service continues its expansion to additional countries and adding support for more banks.


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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com

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