Let's also call out Venmo and Google Pay (nee Google Wallet) in this hall of shame, both of which removed the ability to send and receive funds from their website (both mobile and desktop) in favor of strongarming you into installing the app to do so (get bent if you don't have a smartphone, I guess?). It would seem that "entering a number into a form" is a feature that is too sophisticated for the web platform to properly support (alternatively, perhaps we are meant to believe that such a thing is beyond the abilities of Google engineers?).
> Let's also call out Venmo and Google Pay (nee Google Wallet) in this hall of shame, both of which removed the ability to send and receive funds from their website (both mobile and desktop) in favor of strongarming you into installing the app to do so (get bent if you don't have a smartphone, I guess?).
Er, just checked and the Google Pay Send and Request money feature is accessible from both mobile and desktop site (well, I was lazy and checked both from mobile using “view desktop site” on and off.)
So, let's not call them out for something they absolutely didn't do.
I'm simply citing this email from Google themselves that I received in July, telling me that "To keep sending or requesting money, you’ll need to use the Google Pay app." This was within a month of receiving an email from Venmo telling me that "Venmo is phasing out some of the functionality on the Venmo.com website over the coming months. We are beginning to remove the ability to pay and charge someone on Venmo.com. Over time, you may see less functionality on our website." If Google has reversed course on that plan I'd be quite happy because it's totally baffling, but for all I know they're just taking their time with it like Venmo is. In the meantime, I went back to paying friends with cash and checks.
Was the Wallet to Pay transition anything more than a rename? I confess I don't understand Google's branding strategies. According to news sources, Wallet became Pay around February, and this email was received months later.
> According to news sources, Wallet became Pay around February, and this email was received months later.
I think Pay replaced Wallet when you say as an app upgrade, but not everyone upgrades immediately or automatically; that may have been about decommissioning Wallet after the upgrade was available.
I never had the Wallet app so I'd be confused to receive an email telling me to upgrade, but I'd be happy to be wrong. For as much as I'd rather have banks just natively support digital inter-bank transactions, if I absolutely have to share my bank account details with a third party, at least Google has relatively good security practices.
