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Starting next week, Google will roll out an update for Google Pay that will allow users more control over how their transaction data within the app is used for delivering a personalised experience. All users in India will be asked for their consent on whether they would like to turn on the data safety controls as soon as they update to the next version of the Google Pay app.

Google said that if users switch on the ‘Personalisation within Google Pay’ toggle, they will receive more relevant offers and rewards based on their activity within Google Pay, including their transaction history. 

The updated version of the app would also allow users to delete their transaction data history within the app. Users will be able to delete individual transactions and activity records that they don’t want to be used to personalise their Google Pay experience. Besides UPI, Google Pay also allows users to make contactless card transactions at retail outlets through tokenised debit or credit cards linked to their smartphones. The new Google Pay privacy policy update will allow users to delete these types of transactions from their history as well.

“As India embraces digital payments, we remain committed to bringing the industry along to ensure that we keep raising the bar to deploy state-of-the-art data security and privacy measures and put the users in charge of how their data is used,” wrote the company’s blog post. 

Google Pay’s privacy policy doesn’t allow the application to share users’ personal or transaction data with third-party applications or even other Google products for targeted advertising. With the new update, users can prohibit the application from using their transaction history for sending them relevant prompts to open the app too. 

In terms of the market share for transactions on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) network, Google Pay ranks second. In January, of the 2.3 Bn transactions recorded on the UPI network, PhonePe led the table with 968.72 Mn UPI transactions, followed by Google Pay with 853.53 Mn transactions. 

According to KalaGato’s latest report on UPI-enabled fintech platforms from November 2020, Google Pay was the most dominant payments app in terms of reach among internet users with 65% reach, followed by PhonePe with 63% penetration and Paytm at 57% reach.