Google Pay is a digital payment service that has gained popularity in markets like India. And now the search giant is planning to make it even more compelling by adding features like crypto payments.

In a new Bloomberg report, Google’s president of commerce Bill Ready stated that Google has hired former PayPal executive Arnold Goldberg as part of a company-wide push into financial services, including crypto. Arnold Goldberg has been recruited to become the vice president and general manager for the payments and emerging market efforts — an initiative Google calls Next Billion Users, or NBU.

So far, Google has not confirmed its plans to include support for crypto payments in its digital wallet app. However, Ready stated that “Crypto is something we pay a lot of attention to. As user demand and merchant demand evolves, we’ll evolve with it.”

This indicates that we may see Google include this feature in their wallet if the crypto market evolves and demand for the feature rises.

Ready also revealed that Google will be adding more features to Google Pay soon to make it a more “comprehensive digital wallet”. Some of these upcoming features include digital ticket support, airline passes, and vaccine passports.

These new efforts come after Google shelved its plans to add bank accounts to its payment app. The project included a revamp of the app which would enable users to apply for “Plex” checking and savings accounts from 11 banks but the search giant scrapped it in October 2021.

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According to the report, a couple of Google Pay users in India have noticed the presence of the option to add a credit or debit card as a supported payment option in the Google Pay app. The option is ye to be rolled out statewide but Google is said to have been expanding its A/B testing to more users over the last couple of weeks. The feature is most probably a server-side switch and doesn’t seem to require to be on the most recent version of the app.

Google has created a support page up which explains how users can set up their cards to use with Google Pay. The steps outlined include filling in their card details (card number, expiry date, CVV, etc.) and authenticate the details using the One-Time Password. If the feature is activated for a user and he is verified, the user will be able to make tokenized card payments at NFC-enabled POS terminals in addition to QR-based payments at vendors, and online payments on 3rd-party merchants where Google Pay is accepted.

At the moment, Google Pay only supports Axis debit/credit cards and SBI credit cards issued by Visa in India. With the roll-out of NFC-based contactless payment, more bank and issuers may be added so as to expand the reach.

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