Google Pay Adds Support At 89 More US Banks

Google Pay has added 89 banks compatible with its services in the last month and a half of updates, according to a report from TalkAndroid.

The new additions keep up the tech giant’s trend of filling out support for financial institutions (FIs) around the country, and Google Pay is now supporting almost 3,000 FIs in total.

The report stated Google Pay works with most broad payment forms, including big banks like Wells Fargo, Capital One or other similar FIs.

The updates, according to the report, are mostly concerned with smaller institutions than those, though, particularly credit unions (CUs) and local banks.

One of the FIs that added Google Pay recently was Swedish buy now, pay later (BNPL) giant Klarna, PYMNTS reported. The company brought with it merchants, including Sephora, Journeys and rue21. Klarna U.S. Head David Sykes said in a statement at the time that the company was focused on “providing all of our users with a seamless, contactless shopping experience as stores reopen and the pandemic continues to affect communities across the nation,” and the company wanted to help its retail partners through the pandemic by driving business growth.

Klarna added Apple Pay, a competitor to Google Pay, in January of this year, and merchants reported strong returns from that partnership, with increases of 310 percent on order volumes in some cases.

In addition, Afterpay has begun offering services on Google Pay as well as Apple Pay. Afterpay’s BNPL services were aimed to help people looking to shop on a budget during the financial crisis this year. The agreement allows Google Pay customers to select Afterpay as an option at the payment window, paying for their purchases in four installment payments.

For customers who pay on time, the service is free.

Nick Molnar, Afterpay co-founder and U.S. CEO, said the service would be important as retail begins to reemerge after the pandemic and would need to be available to help with driving growth.