Gmail, Contacts, Assistant and Messages apps no longer support sending money | Hacker News Reader

Gmail, Contacts, Assistant and Messages apps no longer support sending money

support.google.com

94 pointsbkraz113 comments

Is Google Pay new in the rest of the world? It has been very successful in India as a UPI-based payment method.

India has gotten aggressively cashless (at least in cities) and Google Pay definitely rode that wave here.

Google Pay has existed for a long time pre-UPI. The UPI app was known as Google Tez until the brands were combined last year, it's now called.Google.Pay but the app is still separate from the actual Google Pay app. (NFC wallet being the primary mobile functionality of the same)

Google Pay has never even been available in certain parts of Europe and isn't available in Africa, the Middle East, most of Asia and in most countries in South America.

The exclusion of Asia and certain European countries surprises me somewhat, but that may be because there's not a large market for it (because local initiatives have already taken the market).

Both Google Pay and Apple Pay showed up a little to late in many countries. Local alternatives already dominated, so neither have really been able to gain traction.

Seeming someone try to use Apple Pay in Denmark is a bit of a novelty. It works and is reasonably well supported by payment terminals, but why bother when you already have MobilePay, which have even wider support and more features?

I have yet to encounter someone who uses Google Pay.

I use Google Pay every single day in Denmark. My wife uses Samsung Pay every single day in Denmark. It's hard to see what people use when they touch their silicon and glass rectangles to the terminal, harder still when COVID-19 distances are mandated in all stores here.

I personally prefer to use contactless cards or Google Pay instead of MobilePay.

The major reason behind this is mainly due to how MobilePay integration was done with the card terminals over here in Finland: you need bluetooth (or in some cases, a camera to read a QR-code) to start the payment transaction. I believe this is primarily due to Apple restricting the use of NFC to Apple Pay (and other first-party apps).

Another big reason is that my bank has native support for adding cards to Google Pay through their own app.

I do still use MobilePay very often over my bank's own transfer app (Siirto). MobilePay was one of the first ones to the market (if you exclude the app/card scheme Elisa had a few years ago, currently owned by Aktia) and is still faster than asking for someone's IBAN.

I set it up, used it once, and then realised it's exactly like using the contactless card I already have in my wallet. I can maybe see the point of using it on a watch, but on a phone?

Slightly useful for in-app payment with Just Eat, though.

I use Google Pay for my personal account, and a normal VISA/Dankort for my shared account. It's convenient to easily find the right payment method. If Danske Bank would only issue cards with different textures! With Google Pay I just touch my phone to the terminal while Mobile Pay requires more steps (90% of my Mobile Pay purchases are... fancy strawberries).

I'd like to use it in Serbia but it's not available, instead there are plans to make local alternatives for card-based payments, but for debit accounts you can show or scan a QR code and perform an instant and free payment. Support for this is mandated by law. Not NFC but contactless (even more so, optical scanning vs near field radio waves) and compatible with any device with a screen and camera (or POS cash register with barcode reader).

I've used Google Pay for years but all it does is let you add a credit card and use your phone at merchants that support contactless cards or for in-app purchases on Android. I've never heard of using it to send money or store a balance.

It may vary from country to country but at least in the US Google Pay allows for sending and receiving money.

Genuinely surprised to hear that any of those apps ever supported payments in the first place. Not that this excuses sunsetting a feature that people depended on (It's The Google Way!), but...

How do people depend on sending money with Gmail when you can send it in the browser or app? What is the problem?

I clicked the "Learn how to send money to friends" link and the first step is to "Open the Google Pay app"

You lost me right there Google. I already have your Gmail app to send money and now you are taking functionality away from it and making me download another of your apps.

You confirmed it was actually possible to send money in Gmail? Because I, and some other people who replied here, were unaware it was even possible.

I have emailed money through Gmail for two years now. Apparently no more...

What were the previous limits you were allowed to send?

It might not have ever launched in your locale, perhaps. I used it a few times to send money to another person in the USA. For what it did, it was exceedingly simple and easy to use.

There used to be a dollar sign right next to the paper clip sign you use to attach files, but it attaches money instead. Genius. But I would ask other American friends to send me money that way instead of venmo and they would tell me they don't have that option available to them. Once I would send them 5 cents, then they would get the money attach option, but not before.

I'm not from the US but I've never seen that option either. Must be just a select few countries.

So you find it more convenient to switch to a totally different money sending service than to just download a separate app?

Yes.

In the long run? I’d expect so.

Leave now and avoid the rush when they cancel it

So what if it is cancelled one day? You lose like a few minutes of your time and then complain that no one else offers something as good?

By downloading another app you also get the advantage of not using Google and not having your data mined for advertising/the service randomly cancelled on a whim.

Google has a lot of opt out controls to prevent personalized advertising. Other services are doing a lot worse. Google Pay is instant when using a debit/credit card and has great support. Setup is a breeze so even if it is canceled one day, which there is no indication of it happening soon, you really aren't losing anything.

Instead, you are simply giving it to another company when Google probably already has a lot of information. Even if they start out not taking any more information than they need to (which, being a money app, probably is a decent amount of information), I don't trust any company to stay this way.

Other companies shut down and sell off to larger places too, so you aren't exactly off the hook there. Slews of apps have done this. You are simply aware of some of googles' stoppages, in no small part because you might have used a couple or because they get publicity for longer.

What's the difference at that point?

> making me download another of your apps

Downloading another app is bad makes me realize mega-apps like Wechat existed for a reason.

The idea of companies trying to push app on their customers is something I've been think a lot about recently, as the number of apps on my phone has grown to cover two screen, not including those hidden away in a junk folder.

The IT landscape has turned out completely opposite to what I would like. I love have dedicated, native, applications on my computer, but things are slowly migrating to web application or Electron apps. On my phone I have a ton of apps, some of which I just use a few time a year and which could just as easily be a web application. Companies just love to get their little logo onto my home screen on my phone, so now everything needs to be an app apparently.

Compare the privacy loss of website access to app access.

My credit union requires full location tracking for their app; its just another revenue stream.

In terms of bubbles I think we're in a loss of privacy economic bubble. The first megacorp to track my every move and try to exploit it makes a lot of money. The 25th app on my phone tracking my every move? Does the 25th market participant seriously think they're gonna make money off my private data when 24 competitors have already squeezed all the blood from that stone?

On the other hand, I don't want to send money with my email client, any more than I want to be able to play video games with it. And I'm sure there's people who want to send money on Google's platform, but don't want the rest of the Google apps.

Whatever happened to the Unix Philosophy? Applications should do one thing, and do it well.

It is scary that you're getting downvoted. I guess the thumbs down crowd really wants the web browser to do everything.

If the browser has me as their primary customer I feel it's a good gatekeeper to a web that wants to exploit me.

The browser enables advertisers and malicious users to exploit your privacy.

Not all browsers.

I loved the idea that you could attach money to an email just like you could attach a file. The Gmail interface was perfect, but unfortunately as usual Google messed up the implementation.

When you send money using Google Pay you still select an email address or phone number to send it to, and they get an email if that is what you select letting you know and you get one saying you sent money.

Didn't know you could in the first place.

Next to the attachment button was a little money icon. You could click it and bundle money with an email. It was pretty nifty.

I guess this was US-only? I'm in Australia and never noticed that button (but Gmail is not my main email any more so maybe I just missed it)

I'm on Ireland and I've never seen it either.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but what's wrong with using a bank to send money? Not in US, so I don't even know if that's another one of those things you can't do like having to still use cheques

My ex- asks me for $$ to cover a child expense and in Apple Cash she can have it a few seconds later, transferred right in Messages. Banks can do this, and they have integrations with Zelle and Venmo, but it isn’t as seamless, not by a mile (or a few km).

Yikes, interesting that banks don't try and facilitate it easily. Is it an issue of scale? Or just that they can get away without it ... or relegate the job of 'consumer' banking to other corporations e.g. Google or Apple

There's very little incentive for US banks to implement these features due to a combination of regulatory burden, technology, and most US bank users aren't even aware things could be more convenient, it's just a given that banking sucks and that's how it is.

It's not just that, either. US banks have been slowly working on faster payments system (RTP, run by Clearing House Payments Co since 2017) and then in late 2019 their regulator, the Federal Reserve, told them "hey, we're going to make a competitor to this new system."

There is some merit to the idea of Fed-operated system here, but, well, let's just say that investing money into a system only to end up competing with your regulator doesn't really help banks feel like they're in a stable regulatory environment where they'll be rewarded for doing the right thing and making investments in the future.

Interestingly, Visa and MasterCard have huge incentive to facilitate easier payments.

UPI has become so easy that I see people using it over credit/debit cards all the time.

In India, Visa and MasterCard responded with no-pin-code swipes for small transactions.

So it has (probably) caused some changes.

Still waiting for Apple Cash in the UK. Is it available anywhere other than in the US?

> Not in US, so I don't even know if that's another one of those things you can't do like having to still use cheques

Yup. We can't just send money to each other via the bank, unless your bank happens to participate in the Zelle network, and you want to send less than $5,000 or so (it depends on the bank and your standing with said bank).

It's another super backwards part of US banking.

That sounds ridiculous.

The most annoying part here in Poland is to get charged by your bank by not making enough transactions or not reaching the required specified amount of money or making ATM withdraw below the set threshold. If you managed to do so, you avoided paying monthly fees; that's the only things debit accounts owners should bother themselves about. We can send money between different banks w/o issues and operations are booked IIRC twice in a day; these are instant if it's between same bank accounts, or you can pay an extra if you want money being delivered instantly and recipient belongs to a different bank. We can also send money on registered phone number via apps and the recipient can pick it up via ATM (kind of check that is slowly being adapted around; it replaced previously shortly running system as it was prone to scams); each bank participates in local cash-less payments system called Blik. Of course Apple and Google systems works as well but Blik is more popular anyway.

Most of the time operations are being processed instantly online but there are rare situations where these are being queued offline up until terminal (speaking about stores) gets online.

Btw, are you still required to confirm operations via handwritten signature?

Yep, besides the stupid name, the BLIK system is surprisingly nifty and practical.

They are expanding internationally - if you can read Polish: https://www.forbes.pl/biznes/blik-w-zjednoczonych-emiratach-...

Howdy from Poland too!

I work in Payments in Tumblr and WordPress.com and it blows my mind how outdated US banking is. India is outinnovating US in financial markets. World is going to be quite different in 20 years.

Crazy that your _standing_ with the bank determines what services you get; reminds me of the black mirror episode with the rating system

Wow this really surprises me! Turns out I've been taking the UK banking systems for granted for a very long time.

In the UK I've got a normal debit account with a chip and pin card + contactless, I have a few different type of savings accounts attached to it as well. I can access it online and from their app, I can setup standing orders, direct debits, change my credit card auto-payments, and use "faster transfers" to send money to any UK bank account in under an hour. None of that costs me any fees, the only fees I would pay is if I go into my overdraft or don't pay off my credit card on time. ATM withdrawls are free for the most part and there's no minimum or maximum on tranasctions.

Granted, I am 26 so I imagine a lot of this has happened while I've been growing up.

Furthermore, I don't think Zelle is "instant" like most people would expect. Behind the scenes, one bank is reducing your balance in a database and another is increasing the recipients balance.

I initiated a payment on 7/25 which didn't get deposited until 7/27. I'm not sure if the recipient had access to some funds prior to the transaction clearing.

If Zelle is intended to take on Venmo, banks are going to have to do better.

Zelle is instant in many cases. I send funds to Chase and PNC customers from a Chase account frequently, and the funds (thousands of dollars) is available to the recipient immediately.

Your bank’s UX should indicate if the transfer is immediate or not when you create a contact. Zelle is already doing substantially more volume than Venmo, as its a consortium of the largest banks in the US who have baked it into their user interfaces for domestic P2P money transfers.

At least in India, you would have to add account details which include account number and Indian Financial System Code and then it takes a couple of hours to get it approved. Once you have completed this one time process then you can send money in a relatively easy way.

Google Pay which is a UPI client in India is just an interface over bank-to-bank transfer which takes way the above process. You can use an id or your mobile number to transfer money from bank to bank without any intermediary. It's a revolutionary step in money transfer.

There are several clients which use this UPI or Unified Payment Interface and that is the great thing about it.

It was a couple year fad where all social apps had to support sending money or they were not "real" social apps anymore.

Fads do not have to make sense.

Clamping down on international funding of terrorism, and election integrity.

Damn

Sending money thru gmail was the best way to send money.

Calculated monopolistic move.

Wouldn't the monopolist move be to move more features into apps everyone uses?

I have switched to Outlook.com for my main private business email and protonmail for emailing friends.

Will back out of Google slowly over the next 5 years. The countdown has started.

Google pulls in more functionality into core services. Hn crowd: monopoly! Google pulls out rarely used features. Hn crowd: am I supposed use different app now?!?

Not defending google here - there have been some highly questionable product decisions over the years, but this is just silly.

Also how is outlook any better? Another public megacorp with even deeper government ties. As someone who grew up in the 90s i still remember Microsoft as more successful and meaner oracle.

> Also how is outlook any better?

Google: our business is ads, and you’re the product. Put more of your data into Gmail so that we can show you more ads and do a million other things that benefit us.

Microsoft: our business is software and services and hardware and a bunch of other stuff you can pay us money for. E-mail service is the product, and you’re the customer.

Literally Microsoft:

"""Microsoft uses the data we collect to provide you with rich, interactive experiences. In particular, we use data to: [etc and so forth]; Advertise and market to you, which includes sending promotional communications, targeting advertising, and presenting you with relevant offers."""

Then why are there ads in my Windows 10 OS? Why the aggressive data sponging behavior?

Microsoft is a lot better than Google, but I still feel like I am their product when I use their OS.

It's much more insidious at the operating system level. It's easier to change email providers than your entire operating system. I'm shocked there isn't a louder outcry over Microsoft's intrusions this way into Windows.

If Microsoft doesn’t show you ads why is “Upgrade to ad-free Premium” a thing? You can turn off ads by buying g suite (albeit its more expensive) or just use adblock of some kind.

That's the old Microsoft. As of a few years ago, it has started to shift in the direction of Google too.

So what you're saying is that tech savvy people just don't like Google? Maybe it's because of the slow drop in quality of their search engine, their tendency to cancel projects that people relied on, and their questionable privacy practices? At least, that's why I don't like them. And that's not even mentioning the pit of conspiracy theory peddling, pedophile supporting nastiness that is Youtube.

I don’t have a dog in the fight, I don’t choose Gmail or Outlook. But if I were to play devil’s advocate, I think I would argue Outlook is better on the grounds that Microsoft is not an advertising company. As a company, they don’t depend on distributing free software to folks who are willing to, or maybe ignorant they are trading their personal privacy in exchange.

No doubt Microsoft is trying to monetize user data at this point as well, but their empire isn’t built on top of it. The parent comment said they use ProtonMail for personal, So I suspect they only reason they don’t choose that for business also is the weight the Microsoft name still holds.

Many of us got sucked into the Google vortex a while back on the basis they gave us many of the best software options, in many categories. But at this point, there is nothing Google does that you can’t find an alternative of equal or better quality. So if one day a person realizes Google values don’t align with their own, slowly phasing out all Google services can only have a net positive.

Microsoft business model is trying to insert themselves as a middleman between you and device in as many ways as possible and collect toll fees. I’m not a philosopher but not sure that’s ethically superior to showing ads (also they do show you ads)

I don’t disagree, I think you’re right. I can just identify with folks trying to slowly de-google their lives, I’ve been on a similar mission around a year. The Microsoft name does still carry a lot of weight in the business world, so I suspect that’s the only reason the parent is still partially using them. If it were me I’d go ahead and go full protonmail (or others), but I get the reluctance.

> trying to insert themselves as a middleman between you and device in as many ways as possible and collect toll fees

So... they're a software company? Specifically an OS vendor?

Seriously, how does your description imply anything unethical?

You can't even buy a device today that forces you to use MS. You can always install something else or hack your Windows installation however you want.

Unethical part is having oems ship all their devices with proprietary apis and software that is black box.

> You can't even buy a device today that forces you to use MS

That’s only because they lost that battle.

> Unethical part is having oems ship all their devices with proprietary apis and software that is black box.

This is nonsense. Microsoft doesn't ship most hardware running Windows, and there was never a time any of it was locked to Windows.

I installed Linux on dozens of Windows machines starting in the 90s.

By your logic, all software is unethical if it's closed-source. Apple, Samsung, and every phone manufacturer actually do put effort into locking down their hardware, so you must think they're all far more evil than MS.

Microsoft is approaching that strategy with Windows - they're very nearly giving away Windows 10 at this point, and it ships a lot of data back to MS, plus you're essentially the beta tester for software updates for their enterprise customers.

>I think I would argue Outlook is better on the grounds that Microsoft is not an advertising company.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesnt the free outlook.com (formerly hotmail) still have ads for everybody who doesnt pay? When I log in, I have a banner on the right.

But to your point, maybe the ad is there to annoy people into paying, and less as a source of revenue.

Not really.. it just becomes harder in some cases. For example Google Reader, that went no where and they just killed it. They really could have transformed mailing lists into rss feeds.

Also, google trips. That was great to plan trips about. (Although their map collections is terrible)

It's a basic You Moved My Cheese situation. Change can be good, but pointless change made for no user-visible reason is not.

> Google pulls in more functionality into core services. Hn crowd: monopoly! Google pulls out rarely used features. Hn crowd: am I supposed use different app now?!?

As you surely know the HN crowd isn't a monolithic thing, it is made of a lot of people covering the entire spectrum of existing opinions. Different groups are complaining for different reasons, so that's really to be expected...

If your address is still backed by Gmail, you could check out our new Inbox app at https://www.twobird.com

We think the inbox should support more than just mail. Currently Gmail-only, but working on Outlook (and more) support.

I did the samething back in 2014.

Instead of 5 years it only took about 6 months. Your mileage will vary.

I tried Protonmail then I noticed they don't freely allow you to easily download all your data, as Google does. Denying a free easy access to your own data is borderline illegal, but Protonmail is probably too small to draw attention about it.

What do you mean by "download all your data"? ProtonMail Bridge allows you to connect to your account via any email client, from which you can download your complete mailbox: https://protonmail.com/bridge/

Edit: there is also the Import-Export tool https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/export-import-.... And an export action from the web interface (though that's only for individual emails, so not practical for mass download).

First sentence of your second link : "If you’re a ProtonMail free user, you can export emails individually and save them locally on your device".

Good luck when you have 3000 emails and you are physically disabled.

In other words, signing in and using the service is "free", but you must pay to quit it or move to another provider.

There are also many other data than just emails : contact list, your private keys, the folders/tags you used, and all other personal data that Protomail may have about you.

Facebook and Google allow you to download a single zip of _all_ your data, at any time you wish, _for free_. They do it because it is required by the _law_, not because they are being nice.

So, yep. I would send a big warning to anyone who wants to try Protonmail, because Protonmail's terms of service uses dark pattern in that regard, and probably illegal in EU or California.

So you’re talking specifically about the FREE tier, not the Prontomail service itself. If you want to get an export of all the data they have on you, you can send them a request via their support, they are compliant with Swiss privacy shield which is basically a more strict version of GDPR. They have 30 days to comply once the request has been sent to them.

Nothing to do with a dark pattern.

> Swiss privacy shield which is basically a more strict version of GDPR

That's not true. I'm talking about consumer rights. In fact, last I checked (about 1 or 2 months ago), Data Portability Right doesn't even exist in Swiss laws, but it does exist in GDPR and the California Privacy Act.

Protonmail is all built around the Swiss bank image of "your data is as secure than your money". Protonmail doesn't even offer IMAP for free.

If you agree with their methods, no one will stop you to use their services. But again : they do NOT comply with basic consumer rights common to other providers, and I wouldn't recommend them to anyone I know

Let's check. I just sent their support an email to ask for all personal data they have on me (I'm living in the EU, and have Swiss citizenship). I will update in this thread once I have an answer, and if I don't have one then that will be a good reason to write a blog article...

Regarding the IMAP support, I don't see how it's an issue that they provide it to their paid tier. ProtonMail is a paid service, with an option to have limited free accounts.

I assume this is related to the other Google post today[1], wherein the moderators are accused of gaslighting their customers instead of responding appropriately.

Not sure of the context here, so I'll let better informed voices prevail, I guess.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23969442

Somewhat OT, but in what world does "This has been a running problem with Google Drive and there is no workaround for now. What we can do is to send feedback to the team so all of these can be heard." qualify as "gaslighting"?

This term, at least until recently, meant dismissing abnormal behavior by making the questioner doubt their own sanity. I have a hard time getting that even from the least charitable interpretation of the above.

Gaslighting is just a vogue term. Nobody who uses it nowadays knows or cares what it actually means.

In this case I assume it means that Google appears to solicit feedback but than responds by saying it's the users fault since not everyone used this feature. Calling this gaslighting may be hyperbole, but it does somewhat match the definition of the word as I understand it.

Related: I live in Vietnam and Google maps won't load photos on desktop here. I and many others reported the issue, which has been going on for over a year. The solution: set your location to a rich country. Anywhere in the EU, US, Australia, New Zealand. Photos instantly work again. Set it to somewhere in the middle east, Africa, SEA, no photos. Support started replying to people on the thread with this workaround. Unfortunately, it breaks all localisation for search, shopping, and so on. When I brought this up, support asked me to provide proof that it breaks localization, and when I provided it, they then said that Google is a for-profit company and can't be expected to fix every problem in poorer countries where they make less money. At that point, I gave up in frustration.

Gaslighting? Maybe not. Shitty support? Absolutely. At the very least they have made sure that I'll never try and use Google support again.

Uh, I know what it means. Millions of others do, too.

No way to prove it, but I'd actually be pretty surprised if you're right about millions of people knowing what it actually means.

Stop gaslighting all of us. ;) There are over 250 million adults in the US. So you think that less than 1% of the US population comprehends what "gaslighting" is?

I doubt you'd wager much money on that.

The way I see it used in practice is wrong like 100% of the time.

It was a quote from the other thread, which I'd just seen. Seems it struck a nerve with some folks.

It was my comment that described it as gaslighting. I think it's a reasonable use of the term when in the thread the mod says it's partially your fault you can no longer see the size of a folder, the way you have been accustomed to doing for the last 30 years.

    "Well, a big part of the problem is how few people actually follow through with requests using the mechanism."

No, Google, I think a big part of the problem is that you didn't implement a feature that has been a staple of computers for decades.

https://support.google.com/drive/thread/3970069?hl=en

Wait. Neither Unix directories nor Windows folders nor Mac folders track the size of their contents. The only way to get the "size of a folder" in any of these environments is to enumerate all of their contents recursively and add up the sizes of all the files, using some kind of tool, because this information is not stored in the directory or folder.

Now who is gaslighting?

On macOS: right click a folder, pick "Get Info" from the contextual menu and you get a window with all the info on the folder , including size and number of files in it.

... which recursively enumerates the contents and adds up their sizes.

Nope. The original comment said "using some kind of tool". That's false.

Well, yes, that’s exactly what it does. Operating systems include many tools.

In this case, as you already know (or should), no external or extra "tool" is needed. You hit "get info" and it tells you. Boom. Done.

That’s still a tool, even if it’s included with the OS.

This is getting a little bit silly. But the comment that started this discussion was just making the point that this stuff isn’t built into the filesystem.

First, many filesystems do track recursive size. This feature is present in any filesystem that supports quotas. But this argument is a red herring.

Any service that charges a unit price should make the unit cost of a service-set available easily to the customer. Failing to do so is user-hostile. "Unix directories nor Windows folders nor Mac folders" charge the user per byte.

> This feature is present in any filesystem that supports quotas.

That's not true. No Linux filesystem supports recursive size tracking even though they mostly support quotas. The quotas are enforced and tracked by the block/extent and inode allocators.

CephFS is the first counterexample that comes to mind. Recursive size and filecounts are available through extended file attributes (e.g. getfattr -d -m ceph.dir.* /path/to/dir) and can be made to be default in e.g. ls -l output.

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