Over the last decade, digital wallets have gone from an exciting curiosity to a mundane part of our everyday lives. Whether you're shopping online, buying something in a store, or sending money to a friend, tools like Venmo, Apple Pay, and Google Pay help power our modern digital economy. Despite launching in 2011 — and relaunching in the US with a new app last year — Google has struggled to get a foothold in the market. In 2020, it only accounted for 3% of the US market, compared to 5% for Samsung Pay and a colossal 92% for Apple Pay. To help gain momentum in this ever-growing space, Google is bringing in an industry veteran to steer the ship.

Arnold Goldberg, a former executive at PayPal, has been tapped to run the payments division. He'll be working alongside Bill Ready, Google's president of commerce and a previous colleague of Goldberg's at PayPal. In an interview with Bloomberg, Ready discussed what Goldberg is bringing to the table and the direction they intend to take Pay in the future.

Their first priority is pivoting from the abandoned Google Plex project. Plex was planned as the next evolution of Pay: a bank account integrated into the mobile wallet. Moving forward, Google doesn't want to compete in the retail banking market. Instead, it plans to deliver third-party banking services directly to consumers, becoming the nervous system of the emerging digital economy.

To that end, Google is placing its bets on turning Pay into a comprehensive digital wallet that carries more than just your credit cards. It wants to place more emphasis on being the home for all of your concert tickets, boarding passes, loyalty cards, and vaccine passes, much of which is already bundled in the app. Anything that has to do with the exchange of money, Google wants to be a part of it.

But boosting your wallet in Pay won't be enough to make it a significant player in online shopping. Fintech giants like PayPal and Apple Pay dominate the marketplace, and consumers are notoriously reluctant to change their habits. To overcome this, Google plans to leverage its massive consumer reach with its search engine, incorporating Pay more directly with its shopping services and showcasing loyalty cards and eligible personal discounts. It even has plans to push more vendors onto its Shopping service (and away from Amazon) by completely eliminating seller fees. It's a bold strategy, especially as the company faces numerous antitrust lawsuits regarding its dominance in search.

According to Ready, Google is also toying with the idea of incorporating cryptocurrency into its digital wallet. It's partnered with Coinbase and BitPay to look at how they can allow customers to store their crypto on Pay while still allowing them to pay in traditional currency. No matter how you feel about cryptocurrency personally, there's no doubt it's an ever-growing field that could attract a new group of users.

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