Google Pay adds biometrics for digital payments

India Today
October 30, 2019

Biometric security which was introduced by Google with Android 10 has now come to the Google's widely-used digital wallet platform and online payment system- Google Pay. The feature can be seen in the latest 2.100 version of the app and allows users to protect their online transactions using fingerprint and facial recognition feature.
Google Pay users previously had to enter a PIN to secure their transactions. This has changed now with the latest update. Google has now added support for biometrics API so that you can use your fingerprints or face to authenticate your money transfers. The new feature does the job faster than the traditional PIN security.
Note that this feature is not available in India. Google Pay India still requires UPI pin authentication for all transactions on UPI and biometrics is not replacing the UPI. The biometrics can be used to set up device lock and the same can be used for unlocking the Google Pay app.
The feature is currently available only for Android 10 devices but according to Android Police report the feature might also come to Android 9 phones soon. User can find the option under the Sending money section of the app. User can switch from PIN to biometric security or keep both options to protect the money transfers done via app. However, it is important to know that the biometric security feature works only for the money transfers and not the NFC payments in stores. For that, you still have to unlock your phone.
Biometric security has several advantages over the PIN-based security. Remembering the PIN can be annoying at times. "You're probably hearing advice about making sure that it's complicated or that there's a requirement to have certain characters that's infuriating from a user point of view," Google's product manager for authentication, Steven Soneff told mobilesyrup.
Google Pay is the rebranded version of the UPI-based Tez app which was launched in the year 2017. The company rebranded it to Google Pay in 2018. The app today has 67 million active users in India. Google Pay recently also started sending app notifications and SMS to users informing about their transactions.
"...to help our users fully understand each step on the app, we have now launched notifications and SMS alerts to clarify the direction of flow of money: Google Pay will now send app notifications as well as SMS to inform users each time they receive a collect request to highlight that approving the request will deduct money from the users' bank accounts," Ambarish Kenghe, director, Product Management, Google Pay told in a blog post.

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