Google announced Thursday, March 11, 2021, that it is slated to give its Google Pay users more control over their transaction data following fears of Indian consumers and regulators about such personal data being misused. To do this, the app has updated its privacy policy which will be released next week.
Google Pay is a mobile app that lets users send money and pay bills. The digital wallet can also be used to purchase items from a variety of online stores. It can also reload phones, among other things, given that it supports UPI payments and contactless transactions.
In a statement by Google Pay Vice President, Ambarish Kenghe, he said that “Privacy is already a key priority for us… If you do anything on Google Pay, it stays on Google Pay – and that’s the state today. What we are saying now is we are creating new controls for managing your Google Pay activity, even on Google Play. So if you’re doing something on Google Pay, we want you to be in control of saying – should this activity be used or recorded for use for personalising a feature.”
In a blog post, Kenghe continued to say that, “As India embraces digital payments, we remain committed to bringing the industry along to ensure that we keep raising the bar to deploy state-of-the-art data security and privacy measures and put the users in-charge of how their data is used.”
Apart from providing Indian users with more control over their transaction data, these users on the app will also have the chance to customize other personalization-related features.
Among the features that will be revealed to Indian consumers as part of the new update next week include an on and off toggle button that gives users the chance to say no and prevent their transaction data from being shared by the app, reports Mint.
In turn, this toggle feature prevents the digital payment app to make personalized and targeted offers and ads. In addition to the toggle feature, consumers who also use the program have the opportunity to deselect transactions that they do not want the company for using for ads and offers.
According to Tech Crunch, the company maintains that both new and existing users will have these options, even while they change their minds at a later time. Customers who do not agree with the terms and conditions, as well as the new features, will not be banned nor blocked from using the app.
