Google will soon let Indian Google Pay users make contactless payments using their debit or credit card. Currently, Google Pay only offers Unified Payment Interface (UPI) payments that let users send or receive money directly to their bank accounts either by entering a mobile number or scanning a QR code. But that's set to change as Google has begun testing tokenized card payments for a small batch of users in India.

As spotted by Android Police, some Google Pay users have started seeing the option to add a credit or debit card as a supported payment option in the Google Pay app. The option isn’t available for everyone as of now, but Google has slowly 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. The option was unavailable for me on both my phones running the Google Pay version 65.0.001_RC06.

Google already has a support page up, which describes how users can set up their cards to use with Google Pay. Basically, users will have to fill in their card details (card number, expiry date, CVV, etc.) and authenticate it using the One Time Password.

Once activated and verified, users will be able to make tokenized card payments at NFC-enabled POS terminals, QR-based payments at vendors, and online payments on 3rd-party merchants where Google Pay is accepted. We first learned about Google's plans to add support for tokenized cards in September last year. However, it's only now that the company has finally begun to roll out the functionality to Google Pay users in India.

For now, Google only supports Axis debit/credit cards and SBI credit cards issued by Visa, but it’s likely it will bring support for more banks and issuers once the feature becomes available for all users.

Via: Android Police