Google Pay Accidentally Sent Free Money to Users up to $1000: Can They Keep it?

Google Pay recently randomly sent free money, dubbed as "rewards," to some users as high as $1,000, but it turned out to be a bug.

Users of the payment service report that the renowned tech giant suddenly deposited money into their accounts.

Google Pay Accidentally Sends Users Free Money

While iPhone users primarily use Apple Pay, Android device owners typically utilize Google Pay. But there are other famous options like Samsung Pay.

According to Android Police, Google Pay has been a popular payment service for Android users. It is a handy option for those who want to pay seamlessly. It no longer requires them to take out their bulky wallet. Instead, they could tap their mobile phones to do so.

This time, some Google Pay users suddenly got their hands on cashback rewards, apart from conveniently using the service as payment for various stores. Some folks only received $10, while others were a bit lucky when a $1,000 deposit reflected on their accounts thanks to accumulated rewards. It depends on what the users purchased, similar to most cashback rewards programs.

Not to rain on their parade, but a bug entirely causes it. They were not supposed to receive this cashback in the first place.

Can Google Pay Users Keep the Free Money?

Users report that the free money comes with a message calling it "dogfooding the Google Pay Remittance experience," as per a report by ArsTechnica.

The news outlet explains that the term "dogfooding" is used by tech developers when they are still testing out a new feature. In other words, it means the devs are still "internally beta testing pre-release software."

With that said, the "rewards'' was not supposed to reach these users. Instead, it should be exclusively available to Google employees or users in internal testing. However, the recent incident goes otherwise. Regular users started getting their surprising cashback that they never signed up for.

The Google Pay team explained the mishap to users who received free money on their accounts. It says they "have resolved an error that deposited unintended cash credit."

They also took the chance to apologize for the inconvenience the bug may have caused its users. Given that the whole thing was merely a mishap, Google told affected users that they had reversed the credit to resolve it.

However, the Google Pay team notes, "If we were not able to reverse the credit, the money is yours to keep." ArsTechnica reiterates that if users have already spent the accidental "reward," they can keep it. If you are worried that the tech behemoth will ask you to pay for it, this should assure you that you no longer have to sweat it.