Digital payments app Google Pay still remains unavailable for Apple iPhone users in India. The Google Pay app, earlier known as Google Tez, was unlisted from the Apple App Store yesterday, and still remains unavailable. Google had confirmed yesterday that the app was unlisted to fix some issues while those who already have the Google Pay app installed on their iPhones may face temporary payment failures. This comes at a time when there is considerable excitement around online shopping, particularly with the sales on multiple shopping websites including Amazon and Flipkart, ahead of the Diwali festival. The Google Pay for Android phones has no known issues at this time, and normal service continues.
Yesterday, Google had said in a statement shared with News18 that the Google Pay app will be briefly unavailable on the Apple App Store as developers try to fix some issues. “The Google Pay iOS app will be briefly unavailable on the App Store; users will be able to see the new app update reappear shortly. A small number of Apple iOS users might experience persistent payment failures on their transactions. Our teams are working to fix it at the earliest. Meanwhile, affected users can reach out to Google Pay support through the app for help. We apologise for the inconvenience to our users,” said the Google spokesperson. The company has not specified the exact nature of these issues.
At this time, searching for Google Pay on the App Store on the Apple iPhone instead lists rival digital payments platforms including PhonePe, Paytm and Amazon, which has the Amazon Pay service. Interestingly enough, if you already have the Google Pay app installed on your iPhone and you open it to make a transaction or a payment, the app doesn’t appear to warn users about potential payment failures. From what we understand from Google’s statement, a small number of Apple iOS users may experience payment failure issues at this time.
This comes at a time when digital payments, particularly the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) transactions have seen a steady growth over the past few months. According to the data by the National Payments Corporation of India released earlier this month, as many as 180 crore UPI transactions were completed in September valuing to as much as Rs 3.29 lakh crore. This is up from 161 crore transactions in August, the latest chapter in what has been a constant rise in UPI transactions with more online purchases and payments being done due to the coronavirus pandemic. Google Pay relies heavily on UPI payments, particularly for iPhone users, though the Google Pay app for Android does support certain credit cards as well.
