Google Pay in the UK is losing its P2P feature on September 6. P2P allows users to send and receive money from one another. However, Google Pay as a service will still exist, but people will no longer be able to send money to each other using it.
“We are announcing the end of Google Pay P2P, our peer-to-peer payments service, in the United Kingdom. Starting from 6 September 2019, you’ll no longer be able to send and request money through Google Pay’s P2P service in Gmail or on pay.google.com,” Google said in an email to users. “If you have a net positive Google Pay balance in your account with us, you can transfer these funds to your bank account. Please sign in to your Google payments profile to transfer your balance into a bank account. If you have a zero balance in your account, no further action is required on your part.”
After September 6, users in the UK will no longer be able to send or request money through Google Pay apps. (Per Google help documents, UK users could only do P2P money transfers by accessing Google Pay on the web.) Google Pay Pay Send capabilities will also be disabled in Gmail. While the feature will continue working for the time being, Google is asking users to transfer outstanding balances to their bank account before the feature is discontinued.
The fact that the feature was only available on the web meant that it was likely not as convenient as other similar solutions, so it makes some sense that Google is shutting it down.