Google Pay may one day show you the best credit card to use for your online purchases

Ben Schoon | May 13 2022 - 3:15 pm PT

Google showed off its revival of Google Wallet this week at Google I/O, but the company isn’t yet done with Pay. In a developer session talking about what’s new in Google Pay, the company outlined a potential future feature where you’ll be shown which credit cards have the best rewards for your purchase.

The 2021 relaunch of Google Pay brought with it a focus on money management and the option to get rewards and cashback on your purchases. While things haven’t worked out particularly well for that initiative, it seems Google isn’t done with the idea by any means.

During the “What’s new in Google Pay” session of I/O, Google’s Rajiv Apana explained Google’s new additions such as the big one, Wallet. This included a bunch of new APIs and tools that developers will use, but it also brought a fun glimpse of a future goal.

According to Apana, a future feature of Google Pay might be the ability to sort through your various credit cards and find the one that offers the best rewards for the purchase you’re actively making.

In the future, we will look to provide even more helpful information about the card benefits such as points, cashback, and purchase predictions, so our users can make the best choice when they are checking out.

Right now, there’s no indication that this is something Google has locked on its roadmap, but just the thought is tantalizing. Credit card rewards programs can be extremely useful and profitable if you use them correctly, but it often takes a lot of research and work to do that. A future where Google Pay can direct you to use one card for its rewards points while booking a flight, but another for its extended warranty while buying a new smartphone is a future that, personally, I’d love to live in. It’d certainly be a compelling reason to use Google Pay over alternatives.

The folks over at Android Police, who first brought this line to our attention, say that Google hasn’t had anything additional to say about this just yet. Hopefully, things pan out because it sounds quite awesome.

You can see the full session, focused on the quote in question, in the video below.