I forgot where it was mentioned [1] that the mess comes from a poor management of international feature list.

In particular, Google wanted it to be successful in India.

But the prior app was designed with USA sensibilities and requirements. Such as, oh, requiring an email and Google account! The thought was that this wouldn't fly in India, and it had to work with just a phone number.

I'm sure there were perverse/crossed incentives on delivery deadlines that lead the leadership team to decide that completely breaking the existing flow/splitting the userbase was the way forward.

[1] Perhaps this Ars Technica article from 2022: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/07/google-wallet-rolls-...