Here’s a good reason to use Google Pay: Google may send you some money for free. Many Google Pay users have reported that the company accidentally credited between ten and a thousand dollars in cash to their accounts.
The money came through Google Pay’s “rewards” program. Under normal circumstances, this program, like a credit card, is supposed to give you a few dollars back every now and then for various promotions. However, the error was very different.
Numerous screenshots show that users received a lot of “rewards money” for what the message called a “Google Pay remittance experience”. The word “dogfooding” in the message is tech-speak for internal beta testing of pre-release software. So if such a message needed to be published, it should have been sent only to Google employees and/or some test partners. But many regular users received this message along with multiple payments.
Uhhh, Google Pay seems to just be randomly giving users free money right now.
I just opened Google Pay and saw that I have $46 in "rewards" that I got "for dogfooding the Google Pay Remittance experience."
What. pic.twitter.com/Epe08Tpsk2
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) April 5, 2023
Users affected by the surprise deposit later received an email from the Google Pay team detailing the error that led to an unwanted cash deposit into their account.
The message begins as follows: “You received this email because an unintended cash deposit was made to your Google Pay account. The issue has now been resolved and credit has been recovered where possible.”
People who left the money in their Google Pay account have had it reversed, but for those who spent or transferred the money, Google adds: “If we were unable to reverse the credit, you keep the money. You don’t need to take any further action.
This is true: If you spent or transferred the money, you keep it! Google probably doesn’t want to spend time going after individual users, and probably doesn’t want to be in the press in this way.
Source: Ars Technica, summarized by fikrikadim editors
