Extending its wallet service outside the US, Google rolled out its P2P money transfer service in the UK. With the rollout, Gmail users in the UK would now be able to send money as an attachment to e-mail.
The recipients can receive the money through a debit card or bank account associated with their “Google Wallet Balance,” which can also store the money for later spend on Google Play store, according to Google.
Currently, the offered service only lets the users transfer money within the UK. With the launch of the service, Google has seeded competition in the European market where Apple plans on launching its Apple Pay service for iPhone users this year.
A recent update to Google Wallet’s app released in December last year now allows iPhone users to extensively use the Touch ID for unlocking the app with fingerprint, review loyalty cards and gift cards online. However, the wallet still does not have access to iPhone’s NFC feature.
With its rising number of users, the product has felt regulatory ropes tightening around itself. Last November, the Canadian government proposed regulations to protect merchants from higher interchange fee in future as Google Wallet gained popularity among users. The proposal allowed Canadian merchants to deny Google Wallet transactions. Read the full PYMNTS report here.
The e-wallet service, which has been intensively campaigning to boost acceptance among merchants and users, recently added 200,000 online retailers in a partnership with payment processor WePay and mobile invoicing and payments platform InvoiceASAP. However, until November last year, it seemed to be struggling to get customers on board with the total number of users reported between 10 and 50 million in the US.
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