Android Pay Rebrands To Google Pay

Google recently announced its decision to rebrand ‘Android Pay’ to ‘Google Pay’. In Episode 5 of the Industry Spotlight, the Flaunt discuss their thoughts on this news… Why not subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch all our latest videos?

See below for the full video transcription.

 

FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION

Chris: So the final topic that we’re gonna be discussing today is the new Google Pay that’s actually come back into play, which has taken over Android Pay and…what was the original? Google Wallet?

Lee: Google Wallet.

Jamie: Used to be Google Wallet, yeah. So, yeah. This isn’t breaking news, really. It’s just another Google service that’s getting a big rebrand. And my view on this is it’s just terrible for consumers because, obviously, paying for stuff is obviously one of life’s, you know, necessities. And when you’ve got a service that deals with this…I mean, you look at Apple Pay. We’ve just been talking about it, and it’s ubiquitous now. If you’ve got an iPhone, Apple Pay is the thing. But Apple never changed the name of that. It’s always been called Apple Pay, right?

Whereas with Google, you had Google Wallet and no one used it. No one knew what it was. So it just came into fruition and then, yeah, it changed to Android Pay. Which is, okay, Android Pay right? You know, the name’s a little bit weird because it’s tied to a mobile operating system, rather than…because obviously you can pay in-browser in Chrome now, right? So you’d probably go up the ladder of branding if you wanted to be ubiquitous and go across everything like Apple Pay does.

Chris: So you think that’s why they’ve tried to do it, to generate a bit more awareness? Because Google’s, like, the top dog name.

Jamie: Yeah. People don’t necessarily know what Android is, do they?

Chris: Well, I would hope that a lot of people did know what Android was, but it’s gonna resonate harder, isn’t it, with the Google brand name behind it?

Lee: There’s more gravity isn’t there, with Google Pay.

Jamie: I just think, like, with rebranding exercises, for a service like this, obviously it relies on being in brick-and-mortar stores. That’s where you’re gonna use this thing. Well, not always, but, you know, quite a lot of times, you know, tap and pay and all that stuff, you look at these systems, it says “Apple Pay” on it, doesn’t it?

And it just seems to be recently, the last few months, they finally managed to, sort of, cover quite a lot of brick-and-mortar shops with Android Pay logos, which is great. And then consumers are just getting used to it, like older generations that may not know what Android is just see that little green robot and pay next to it and think, “Oh cool, my phone can do that.”

And now they’re just swapping it again. It’s, like, stop it. Just stick with one name. Because now they’ve got to send a new sticker out to every merchant in the U.K. or wherever, or world, saying, “Take your Android Pay logo down. It doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s defunct. And put this Google Pay logo up.”

Chris: There’s a bit of a disconnect though, isn’t there, between the two products? Obviously, it is Google, but Android Pay and Google, they’re not an exact product are they where, obviously, Apple Pay is Apple products as well. So they’re probably just trying to match that same thing, aren’t they, really?

Jamie: Yeah. It’s just annoying that they keep changing stuff.

Lee: It’s the way in which they go about it. They don’t do any marketing leading up to it to try and preserve it or to try and inform people that they’re changing it. They just send out an email. There you go it’s changed. So it’s just, like, “Oh.”

Jamie: I mean, what about people that…let’s say they update in their apps and they don’t take any notice of what’s going on, which is pretty much everyone? And then they come to pay for something with the phone tomorrow and they’re looking for the Android Pay logo, it’s not there. You know, there’s no migration or there’s no, like…you know what I mean? Like, for consumers that don’t keep up with tech news or don’t know what Android is, for example, they just click on that button on the phone and tap it on something and it’s not there the next day because it’s changed. It’s not only changed its name, changed its icon. It’s changed all of the branding. It’s just gone. It’s too late.

Chris: They’re probably not bothered, are they? It’s not like they’re gonna offer any customer support for it or anything. They’re not gonna be getting complaints down the phone. It’s just, it is what it is, and they’ll transition and people, yeah, they might well go into a shop and try and load their app up and it won’t work. But they’ll soon find out, won’t they? And then, once they do a little bit of research, they’ll transition. Yeah, I don’t think they’re going for, you know, being recognized as the brand that pleases everybody here. I think it’s just, “We wanna make this move, and we will make this move.”

Jamie: Yeah, it just seems annoying, and just a shame from the marketing department’s point of view. I know they’ve done tons to push Android Pay in the last few years. I mean, putting stickers in every shop is a big push. I don’t know how much that cost. And then you’ve got the Android Pay thing before Christmas, where you got free vouchers for using it. They pushed it into Uber and made it really easy to use. You know, people have just started becoming familiar with Android Pay as, like, the Google way of paying for stuff electronically, and now it’s just changed. It seems a shame. It’s just annoying.

Lee: Spoken like a group of people who deal with Google.

Jamie: It just annoys me why they can’t settle on stuff. But surely, if they wanted to call it Google Pay, they should have decided that when they launched it, or pretty soon after.

Chris: It is kind of typical of Google, though, isn’t it? Because they really do want the brand in front of everybody, don’t they? Anywhere they can get any assets that they’ve got, any relationships or collateral that they’ve got, they want the Google brand name to be the highest up on that branding, don’t they, really?

Lee: Well, surely when the conversations were happening about Google Wallet, “Google Pay” must have been thrown in there.

Jamie: Probably, yeah. It didn’t help that Google Play Store was called “Google Play” for a bit, which is one letter off. So you get into that territory as well. Google Auto annoys me and Google Drive. Because surely Drive is more apt for… it’s called Google Auto, right, in your car.

Lee: Yes. No, Android Auto.

Jamie: Android Auto. So Google Drive, that’s, like, a misnomer a little bit. It’s, like, context. If you’re not contextually aware of what it is, it’s a drive, a hard drive, like surely driving your car. And then Auto is that, “Auto, so automobile, okay, I get it.” Context. But if you didn’t know about the context, like, Auto, you know, “Automatic? What is it? I don’t know.” Could be anything. I think once you’ve got so many products, it’s harder, I guess.

Chris: I think they were going for the pickup on it, as well, at the time. Obviously, everybody knew that they had either an Android phone, didn’t they, or an iPhone? So I think they were probably looking for the recognition of it. People might not form that association with having an Android phone and having a Google account.

Jamie: Yeah, but Apple straight away knew not to call it “iPay” because it’s not necessarily gonna be on an iDevice. You could do it on a MacBook. So it’s, like, why didn’t Google figure that out and just stick with “Google” and then a word, rather than muddy the waters with Android?

Chris: Yeah, I know what you’re saying, but I think people know if they’ve got an Android phone.

Jamie: I don’t know if they do.

Chris: They don’t know if they’ve got a Google phone or not. The brand’s more connected with, you know, Apple. It’s in the brand, isn’t it?

Jamie: But look at the Play Store again. So it used to be called Android Marketplace, right? And now, for the last few years, it’s been Google Play and Google Play Store, or whatever it’s called. It just seems like no one’s decided. It seems like there’s no coherence between the teams. And just going back to what you were saying about putting Google in everything. So look at Gmail. It’s one of the biggest and widely used Google services, right? It hasn’t got “Google” in the name. It’s G-mail.

Lee: It was Google Mail for a time, though.

Jamie: I know, but, you know, everything else is “Google” something and that one’s not.

Lee: But I think because there’s probably not, or slim to no consideration for cost for rebranding and redoing everything, it couldn’t be just all a PR ploy. Because every single tech publication is now talking about Google as GPAY. Maybe it’s just an ongoing cycle. And they just think, “Well, we’ll just change the name of something.”

Jamie: And Microsoft are good at doing that.

Lee: And then it’ll get absolutely blanket coverage over all the media outlets.

Jamie: Yeah, this getting way off topic but, you know, Microsoft do that. Every, like, three or four years, the marketing teams just throw the names out and start again. The amount of different names that Hotmail’s had since it launched…it’s like, Live, Outlook…

Lee: Outlook, Live, yeah.

Jamie: Every few years, they just throw it in the bin and start again.

Chris: They know they’re gonna get free publicity and coverage with this kind of stuff. I mean, look what we’re doing now.

Jamie: Is that good, though?

Chris: We’re talking about it, and there’s gonna be a ton of people, especially in our industry, banging on about this now. And it doesn’t really mean anything, does it, really? But…

Jamie: In the tech world, though, it’s alright, I just feel for consumers. I mean, shopkeepers, how are they supposed to keep up? They don’t know anything about Android and Google, necessarily. So it’s, like, “Swap this sticker in your shop” and then they go, “What? I mean, I just did that.” Some are like “What is Android Pay I don’t know what it is?” And then you’re back to square one, aren’t you, educating people all over again?

Lee: So, to sum up, Android Pay is now Google Pay.