Fishing through your wallet for credit and debit cards might be your only real friction when shopping online, but Google wants to eliminate even that small barrier to truly hassle-free transacting. In a blog post today, the tech giant announced that it will allow signed-in Chrome users to fill in checkout forms with payment methods previously saved to their Google Account.
The feature rolls out today on desktop and doesn’t require switching on Chrome sync; Google Pay handles payment method modifications, additions, and deletions. Additionally, users who’ve saved payment information in Chrome on other signed-in devices (wherever Google Pay is accepted) will be able to pull it up without having to reenter it.
Concerned about security? No need to fret — when you’re signed in and Chrome offers you the option of using a card from your Google Account, it’ll ask you to confirm the card’s CVC. The moment a new card is added to your account, you’ll receive a confirmation email from Google Pay with additional information.
Cards can be managed and deleted in the Payment methods menu from the Google Account settings dashboard (under Payments & Subscriptions), and Google notes that payment method syncing is entirely optional: You can also add credit cards to Chrome locally by heading to Chrome Settings > Payment methods > Add. “Every time you open your browser, you have a task in mind to accomplish. We’ve built Chrome to help you do that as quickly and safely as possible, whether you are completing a search, viewing a website, or making a purchase,” wrote Chrome product manager Sabine Borsay. “This feature is just one more way we are improving this experience for everyone.”
The new payments feature comes as Google introduces novel ways to pay with Google Pay. At the Mountain View tech giant’s I/O 2019 developer conference in May, the company previewed Pending Transactions, an offering targeted at emerging markets that generates a code you can use to make a purchase in cash at a local store.
For the uninitiated, Google Pay launched in 2018, unifying the old Android Pay and Google Wallet into a single cross-platform and cross-browser pay system. The platform adopts the features of its forebears in its in-store, peer-to-peer, and online payments services, and it goes a few steps further. For instance, Google recently rolled out boarding passes and event ticket tools that let fans hold their phones up to NFC readers to gain admission and enable companies to contact ticket holders through the Google Pay mobile app and via lockscreen notifications.
Google has previously said that “hundreds of millions” of users already have payment methods saved to their Google Account (and by extension Google Pay).