Google killing ‘Google Pay Send’ in the UK later this year

Besides paying with your phone at retailers, Google Pay features peer-to-peer capabilities that are a remnant of Google Wallet. The company just announced that it’s killing Google Pay Send P2P features in the UK this September.

The email to United Kingdom users today reveals the “End of the Google Pay P2P service” on September 6, 2019. This includes sending or requesting money in Google Pay on the the web, and Pay Send capabilities in Gmail.

We are announcing the end of Google Pay P2P, our peer-to-peer (P2P) payments service, in the United Kingdom. Starting from 6 September 2019, you’ll no longer be able to send and request money through Google Pay’s P2P service in Gmail or on pay.google.com.

The P2P service will continue to function until then in the UK, with Google advising users to transfer any existing balance into a bank account by September.

If you have a net positive Google Pay balance in your account with us, you can transfer these funds to your bank account. Please sign in to your Google payments profile to transfer your balance into a bank account.

If you have a zero balance in your account, no further action is required on your part.

When Google Pay launched early last year, the Google Wallet app was initially rebranded to Google Pay Send. Later on, peer-to-peer payments were integrated directly into the main application as a new tab.

Google only appears to be killing P2P functionality in the UK. All other Google Pay features like paying with credit/debit cards stored on your phone at physical retailers or apps should be unaffected. Just last month, the service added “pay per ride” support for London transit.

Pay Send is also available in the United States, but the service is much more closely integrated with other products. Besides being available on Android and iOS, P2P is accessible via voice through Google Assistant, Gmail, Messages, and even Google Fi (for family plan payments).

So far, users stateside have not received a similar message about Pay Send. Meanwhile, this move by Google follows Facebook removing similar capabilities for European markets in Messenger earlier this year.