Google Pay international send money feature launches with limited reach

Google recently retired its old Google Pay app and with it the ability to send and receive money, at least on that old app and website. To make up for that, Google is announcing a new feature in Google Pay that expands that money transfer feature beyond the borders of the US. Unfortunately, as it stands, it's a one-way street that has very limited availability, at least as far as this first phase of the rollout goes.

Google Pay, formerly G Pay, started out as a way to pay for services and purchases online. Like many of its kind, it eventually incorporated a feature to send and receive money directly from users. Previously, this was called Google Wallet and then became Google Pay before finally being integrated into a single mobile wallet system that we know today.

That last feature survived the culling of the old Google Pay app but some still have had misgivings over the old app's retirement. To give Google Pay one more reason to embrace the new app, Google is announcing the ability to send money abroad. "Abroad" here might be too broad a term as it is starting out only with Singapore and India.

To be more specific only Google Pay users in the US will be able to send money to other Google Pay users in those two countries. This feature was made possible with partnerships with Western Union and Wise, which is probably why it started out in a very limited fashion.

Google does say that it is planning to expand that coverage to more than 200 countries under Western Union and more than 80 countries under Wise before the year ends. It doesn't, however, say when other users from other countries will be able to send money to others, just like you could easily do with the likes of PayPal these days.