New Google Pay features help you save money on groceries, pay for transit, and budget better

The new Google Pay app is gaining steam pretty quickly since its release. Having first been used in India and then rolled out to the United States and other countries, it affords users a new take on a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payments. Today, Google announced that it will soon add three incredibly useful new features to the app in the form of grocery deals and coupons, transit payments, and budgeting overviews.

By teaming up with more than 500 Safeway stores nationwide, as well as Target, you’ll soon be able to ‘clip’ digital offers and always have them right there with you as you shop – no scissors needed! There are other apps that have popularized this approach in the past, but having it built directly into Google Pay is a sweet addition. Simply tap “View Weekly Deals”, browse those available and tap the heart to save them for later. Then, the app will notify you of relevant offers when you’re near a local Target or Safeway!

Being designed with your budget in mind, the new Google Pay app provides you a full overview of your finances after you connect a compatible bank via Plaid. Navigating to the “Insights” tab, you’ll see a new “spending by category or business” section in addition to the bill reminders, spending, and weekly summaries on large transactions that already exist there.

Tapping on Starbucks this week helped me realize that I need to seriously cut back, and hopefully, this helps you make decisions that save you money as well! You could previously already do this by utilizing the search bar at the top of that app, but as cool as the feature was, I never remembered to use it. Seeing things presented to you instead is much easier, I think. Besides, it’s all categorized for you, so there’s zero manual labor involved.

Lastly, though you could already pay for mobile transit tickets in more than 80 cities and towns across the U.S. via the Pay app (with Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area being added soon with more down the line thanks to Google’s partnership with Token Transit), the company is about to help users access transit tickets directly from the app’s home screen!

By tapping “Ride transit”, halfway down the main tab, you’ll be able to purchase or add a transit card, as well as topping up the balance and paying for your fare when the time comes. Just by holding your phone to the transit reader, you’ll be ready to ride. You won’t even have to unlock your phone.

Google Pay is truly dominating, in my opinion. It now works with a countless number of banks (At least, I’ve lost count), and is incorporating everything from transit, food ordering and delivery, budgeting tools, and more. Once Google releases its Plex card (Get it? Googolplex), I imagine that it will be the go-to destination for all of your money needs. What features do you hope that the Google Pay app receives in the future?