Mountain View is implementing in its app for contactless payments the service with QR Code for peer-to-peer money transactions
Google Pay has just landed in Italy and users in our country could soon be "forced" to get used to a new way to transfer money from one account to another. According to some anticipations, in fact, Google would like to integrate a system based on QR codes that would go alongside the canonical wireless technology based on NFC.
In other countries where the service is active, Google Pay allows peer-to-peer (P2P) payments between users. Basically, I can send money not only to a store or e-commerce for a purchase but also to another user. A very convenient system, and very similar to the PayPal service, if we need to give a friend or colleague money for a gift or pay our share of a dinner bill and so on. To simplify peer-to-peer payments between individual users Google on Google Pay has been experimenting with the use of a QR code that identifies and authorizes the transaction.
How to use the QR code to transfer money on Google Pay
If we need to send money to a friend or he owes it to us we can safely use our smartphone and the Google Pay app. How? Simple, once you have downloaded the app and inserted our credit cards we go to the section send or receive money. At this point in the new page that opens we select the voice QR Code. If we are the ones who have to receive money, our friend will have to scan the QR code displayed on our screen with his camera. If instead we have to give money to a friend, we will scan the QR Code on the screen of his phone.
For Google, this is a system for P2P payments already used in China and India in its app for payments. But there is no shortage of doubts about the cybersecurity of this tool. In fact, many complain about the presence of malware designed ad hoc to disguise the QR codes shown by Google to send money not to our friends but to the secret accounts of a hacker. Not to mention that many users rely on third-party applications to scan the QR code, apps that are often targeted by cyber criminals who use them either to send money to their accounts instead of ours or to directly steal all the data of our card entered on Google Pay. Will Google be able to fix these security issues on its P2P payments on Google Pay?