Google Pay is the service of the Mountain View giant dedicated to electronic payments and a few moments ago an important update of the related Additional Terms of Service was announced to Italian users. The novelties subject to communication essentially aim at greater clarity and will become effective from next May 17, 2022, for this reason, it is useful to go and know them in advance.
A few days after the renewal of the icon of the service, which heralds its transformation into a real complete digital wallet, let’s see what other changes will characterize the near future of Google Pay.
Google Pay: What updates to the Additional Terms of Service
Before going into the merits of the changes made, let’s start with the summary of the changes to the Google Payments Additional Terms of Service (better known as “Google Pay”) as proposed by Big G:
- General updates to improve readability: Although our Additional Terms are still a legal documents, we have done our best to make them easier to understand. We have reorganized or rewritten some topics so that they are easier to find and understand.
- Legal name and address of the service: provider We have entered the name and physical address of the legal entity providing our payment service.
- Greater clarity on how to cancel the payment: service We’ve added more information about how you can cancel your payment service.
- Greater clarity on the relationship between these Additional Terms and Google’s other terms and policies: We’ve clarified the relationship between the Google Pay/Google Payments Additional Terms of Service, the Google Payments Privacy Policy, and the Google Terms of Service.
- Archiving items: We’ve clarified that the storage of non-payment-related items, such as loyalty cards, rewards cards, public transit passes, and boarding passes, is governed by the Google Terms of Service and not the Google Pay/Google Payments Additional Terms of Service.
Analysis of news
Having laid this foundation, let’s take a closer look at the meaning of each of these changes:
- This update affects the entire document: while retaining the same nature as a legal document, Google says it has done a job of simplification and reorganization in order to make it more easily understood by users. In fact, reading the new version of the document and comparing it with the one currently in force you notice the use of clearer terminology and a more appropriate organization of the topics.
- This change immediately catches the eye: while the current version of the document says nothing about it, the one in force from next month immediately states that “Google Payments (also known as “Google Pay”) is a service provided by Google Ireland Limited (“Google”, “we” or “us”), based in Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland”.
- The one relating to the methods of cancellation of the payment service is another fundamental change. Even here the document currently in force does not provide any clarification, where the new version immediately makes it clear in the Introduction that the user has two ways to delete Google Pay: contact Google (the contacts to use are available at this link) and follow the linked wizard.
- As can be seen from the very name of “Additional Terms of Service”, they are not exhaustive, as they presuppose that the user also and first of all accepts the Google Terms of Service, which regulate aspects of significant importance such as the right of withdrawal, the legal guarantee of compliance and much more: reasons why Google makes changes to the services, notice to users, ‘storage and use of items such as loyalty cards, rewards card cards, public transport passes, boarding passes and other items not related to payments’. All with the clarification that in the event of a conflict between the General Terms and the Google Pay Additional Terms, the latter prevail. In addition, although it is not part of the terms of service, the Google Payments Privacy Policy is of great importance, which “describes how Google handles your payment data”.
- In short, “storage and use of items such as loyalty cards, rewards cards, public transport passes, boarding passes and other items not related to payments” are not governed by the Google Pay Additional Terms of Service, but by Google’s general terms of service.
As mentioned at the beginning, the new Google Pay Additional Terms of Service, which can be consulted in preview at this link, will come into force starting from May 17, 2022. Until that date, the Terms of Service readable on this page will continue to apply.