Soundboxes — hardware used by merchants that emits sounds every time a mobile payment is made — have taken off in India, where point of sale activity can get busy and voice alerts from the soundbox help alert multitasking shopkeepers and assistants to a transaction going through. Now, to keep pushing ahead to build out its own payments business in the world’s second-largest internet market, Google is getting in on the act. The internet giant, which is currently one of the mobile transaction leaders in India with Google Pay, is piloting a soundbox of its own in the country to alert sellers of confirmations for UPI payments — a mobile payment standard developed and now ubiquitous in India for instant payments and transfers between banks, or two mobile users, or a customer and a merchant.

“The Google Chrome browser now supports something new to secure your life: passkeys, a stronger, leak-proof version of a password that can use your phone as a token to authorize you to websites. Passkeys can and will be stored inside the Google Password Manager, or inside apps that support passkeys within future versions of Android, Google said. Passkeys are enabled in the lastest version of Chrome in both Windows 11, macOS, and Android.”

“Google already offers parents and guardians tools to restrict purchases their children make on Play Store using the family payment method. The company is now introducing an additional feature that will allow children to send a purchase request for the manager of the family account to approve when there is no present payment method. Children can ask for approval for both paid apps and in-app purchase when the family hasn’t set up a payments method.”

“If you recently used Google Wallet on Android, you might have noticed a touch of holiday whimsy on the Pay screen. Normally, tapping your Android phone to an NFC reader shows the card used and a loading animation just above it. The blue circular progress indicator morphs into a checkmark with that circle, then shrinks to make way for the Google Pay logo. During the holidays, the blue checkmark can morph into any number of characters. One of the more elaborate animations is a cat wearing several holiday sweaters that rolls off your screen to reveal the G Pay icon. It features very smooth transitions, and you don’t even suspect it’s going to occur. The 3-second sequence nearly triples in length, though you can exit or lock your device at any time.”

“Coinbase is celebrating a new deal with Google that appears a lot less than it seems, while critics are savaging a self-financed documentary on the cryptocurrency exchange’s founder Brian Armstrong. On Tuesday, Coinbase announced a deal with the Google Cloud platform that the exchange framed as “a strategic web3 partnership.” Coinbase claims the deal reflects the Google Cloud team’s recognition of “the importance of expanding crypto services and building in web3.” The deal has four components, including Google Cloud, allowing “select customers” to pay their cloud service bills via “select cryptocurrencies.” These payments will be handled by Coinbase Commerce, the exchange’s effort to expand non-crypto firms’ capacity to accept “crypto” based payments from their customers. This feature is expected to be rolled out early next year.”

“While Google’s Cloud Next conference may not pull the crowds like Apple’s annual presentation or even Tesla’s AI Day, there have nonetheless been some interesting developments to come out of this year’s event. Given that Google is now one of the aging stalwarts in the tech industry, it may come as a surprise to some that they plan to begin to accept crypto as payment for some of their cloud computing services. They’ll be relying on Coinbase to facilitate these transactions, which is expected to be operational in early 2023.”

“Google announced today it’s expanding the user choice billing program for Play Store — which lets users choose alternative payment systems for in-app purchases — to India, Australia, Indonesia, Japan and the European Economic Area. The company is calling all non-gaming developers globally to apply for this program, and if they qualify, they can use third-party payment systems in the above-mentioned regions. The search giant introduced a similar policy for non-gaming developers and users in the EEA region in July. The new guidelines are an extension of that. The company gave a 3% discount on fees for developers using third-party billing in the EEA region. With the new announcement, Google is offering a 4% discount on fees to developers. The company said it will reveal more details about that in the coming weeks and months.”

“Google Wallet, a mobile payment system, has officially launched in South Africa today, Tuesday, August 23, 2022. It is a virtual wallet that allows users to pay and transfer money directly from their phones. In South Africa, Google Wallet is currently compatible with six banks: FirstRand, Absa, Nedbank, Standard Bank, Discovery Bank, and Investec. Google Wallet has partnered with four international airlines —  United, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Air France, and Singapore Airlines — that serve South Africa, allowing digital boarding passes and tickets to be stored in Google Wallet and accepted by airlines.”

“EU antitrust regulators have asked app developers whether Alphabet (GOOGL.O) unit Google’s threat to remove apps from its Play Store if they use other payment options instead of its own billing system has hurt their business, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Critics say fees charged by Google and Apple (AAPL.O) at their mobile app stores are excessive and cost developers collectively billions of dollars a year, a sign of the two companies’ monopoly power…The U.S. tech giant has said apps would be removed from its app store starting June this year if developers do not use its billing system.”

“Google has begun rolling out a multipurpose digital wallet that enables users to store, use and present digital credentials such as identity cards and health passes as well as payment cards, transit and event tickets and hotel keys in 39 countries across Europe, the Americas and Asia. Google announced the new Wallet in May and has now begun rolling it out as an update replacing Google Pay in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Ukraine, UAE and the UK. Google is also launching Wallet in the USA and Singapore but Android users in both countries will also still be able to use Google Pay for peer-to-peer payments and money management.”

“Alphabet unit Google said it will from Tuesday cut fees to 12%, from 15%, for non-gaming app developers on its Google Play App Store which switch to rival payment systems, as it moves to comply with new EU tech rules. The world’s most popular internet search engine said the fee cut applies only to European consumers while the freedom to use another payment system will eventually be expanded to gaming apps as well. The move underscores a change in Google’s strategy since last year where it now prefers to bow to regulatory and antitrust pressure with offers of concessions rather than embark on lengthy and distracting fights. The EU rules known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which will come into force next year, require tech giants to allow app developers to use rival payment platforms for app sales or risk fines of as much as 10% of their global turnover.”

“Google is launching a new Google Wallet app on Android and Wear OS, looking to streamline its payments products and lock users into Android more tightly. The move is part of a broader effort by tech giants Google and Apple to bind consumers more closely into their mobile devices by making the digital wallet as essential to consumers’ everyday lives as the physical wallet. That means making the digital wallet not just a way to pay at the point of sale with a credit card but also use tickets, IDs and other essential items. The new Google Wallet, announced Wednesday at Google I/O and available sometime in early summer, will handle all credit and payment cards as well as nonpayment items you would have in your physical wallet, such as driver’s licenses or state IDs, library cards, concert tickets, boarding passes, vaccine cards and loyalty cards. Google is also working on supporting other pass types, like hotel keys and office badges.”

“Google will roll out virtual credit cards for Pay on Chrome and Android later this year, in an effort to better protect users’ financial information during online transactions. Virtual cards are randomly generated 15 or 16 digit numbers that can be used to obscure your true card information when making online payments. The idea is that if a business you transact with has a data breach or suffers a cyberattack, hackers will only be able to swipe your “virtual” number, not your real one. There are a number of companies, like Blur, Stripe, and banks, that provide these kinds of services—often for a price.”

“Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Google said on Thursday it plans to allow third-party payment systems in South Korea to comply with a new law, marking the first time the U.S. tech giant has amended its payment policy for a specific country. Google’s announcement comes after a Korea Communications Commission’s (KCC) request for Google and Apple Inc (AAPL.O) to come up with compliance plans for the new law, which bans major app store operators from forcing software developers to use their payments systems. Most of the new law went into effect in mid-September.”

“According to a new report from 9to5Google (Google does not seem to have a blog post about this yet), starting this week, US Android users can request a “Google Pay Balance Card” that will allow them to spend their Google Pay balance directly on purchases…The new Google Pay card is a virtual Visa debit card that you can set as an NFC card, so now spending that money a friend sent you is as easy (and presumably quick) as setting your Google Pay balance as your NFC card and tapping your phone against a store payment terminal.”

“Google announced it’s partnering with Shopify, giving the e-commerce platform’s more than 1.7 million merchants the ability to reach consumers through Google Search and its other services. The integration will allow merchants to sign up in just a few clicks to have their products appear across Google’s 1 billion “shopping journeys” that take place every day through Search, Maps, Images, Lens and YouTube. The company didn’t offer extensive details about the integration when it was announced during Google’s I/O Developer event…But the news follows a series of updates to Google Shopping resulting from Amazon’s increased investment in its own advertising business , which threatens Google’s core ads business.”