As mentioned, there are multiple ways to access payment processing. Most people don't go to an app on their phone, they do it at the point of sale, likely by following a link from Drive or YouTube or TV or whatever to the web UI (pay.google.com in fact redirects to wallet.google.com).
But the core secrets management and NFC handling app on your phone is and has been "Wallet", and the fact that you claim to be confused about that now is just evidence that you've never needed to use this UI because it Just Works.
The nonsense in this thread is about this "GPay" app, which is not and never was a payments management app. It was a peer payment service, itself based on Wallet. And no one was ever confused about it until they needed an excuse to yell on HN. They just didn't use it much, I guess, so it's been cancelled.