Google has announced at its I/O annual developers conference that its Gmail users will be able to send money securely to friends and family members having Gmail account or even to those who don’t have a Gmail account. Besides attaching photos, videos, documents and invitations to its Gmail service, Google is providing facility to send money via Gmail.
This new service will rollout to Gmail users over the age of 18 in the US over the next few months.The service works with Google Wallet and can be used after it is linked with a user’s bank account. It can also be used if credit is added to a user’s Google Wallet account. Users can also choose to simply link their account with a debit or credit card, but that will result in a 2.9% fee per transaction.
This service is very easy to use. Users should look for the dollar ($) icon in their attachment options to know whether their account has been activated for this feature or not. Users can also get earlier access if their friends have the feature and send money to them. If you have the feature, all you need to do is compose a new email, click the $ icon to attach money to the message and enter the amount one wishes to send, and press send.
Sending money via Gmail is currently only available on desktop. Users will need to have set up Google Wallet to be able to send and receive money.
This newly launched service of Google is not the first service to let users easily send payments over the Web. One can send the money via web by using a little app — Venmo, that does this particularly well. But this service will be smash hit on Google Gmail as Google has huge number of users of its email service.
