Not many people know it, but Google Pay in India and Google Pay in the rest of the world are not the same. While both services have the same brand, Google Pay in India, formerly known as Google Tez, connects to the country’s local UPI payment system, while Google Pay in the rest of the world works more like a normal payment service. But both versions are equally maintained and compatible. Now the Google Pay India app is getting a rewrite from Flutter.
In case you don’t know what Flutter is, or in case you’ve forgotten, Flutter is an open source UI development kit created by Google that allows developers to build their applications using a single code base and then implement it on various platforms, such as Android, iOS, Windows, and the web. By writing the app in Dart, using Flutter, and deploying it on both Android and iOS, Google says they can deliver best-in-class experience on both platforms equally, allowing them to maintain them equally.
As for the changes themselves, the app doesn’t look much different on the surface. Google Pay was already renewed almost a year ago. The real news here, however, is the massive rewrite the app underwent – it was rebuilt with Flutter from scratch. So that’s really great news. You can also see that Google Pay in India also works as a messaging app, allowing users to message each other, but that’s not really new as conversations within the payment platform have been around for a long time.
Google also plans to do this rebuild of Flutter in the standard Google Pay app. That could mean they’re unifying both apps, or it could just mean they’re just rebuilding them for simplicity. Either way, we’re excited to see what Google will come up with. If you are in India or Singapore, you can check out the app right now by going to the Google Play listing and signing up for the beta program.
