"Useless." Why is this application trending on Twitter over its offers?

Google Pay, also known as GPay (1), offers financial benefits such as cash transfers directly to the user's account. This Unified Payments Interface (UPI) (2) application changed the approach to rewards and started offering advantages like discounts on goods and services, which received harsh criticism.

Though there are several ways to use it to make payments without a physical card and to transfer money among friends, it offered more after being updated in 2020. The new program, released in late 2020, allowed users to earn prizes and rebates.

However, as promotional offers increased and cashback declined over time, angry GPay users began venting on Twitter (3). The primary function of Google Pay is to enable NFC payments on devices all across the world. The second is that it manages all of the user's payment options connected to their account, including bank accounts, PayPal, credit and debit cards, and other associated payment methods.

Thirdly, in addition to letting users send and receive money from their peers, its app lets users keep tabs on their spending patterns by connecting a bank account. While a similar app first debuted in 2017, Tez (4) now boasts 65 million active users who transact for $110 billion annually. Google Pay is quickly overtaking Tez as the second-most popular UPI-based app. India's digital payments market is projected to double to $135 billion in 2023.

The main goal of reward programs is to attract people to the application, which they accomplished, and the usability and convenience of the program also helped it draw in and keep users. However, most users were addicted to the cashback deals it initially provided, which many on Twitter claim are now uncommon.

Several tweets indicate that only the hard prizes, which range from Rs. 3 to Rs. 30, are redeemable and that the promotional offers that make up the remainder serve no purpose. In India, Google Pay and other payment processors struggle to satisfy customers with subscription offers and discount coupons rather than the formerly available monetary return.

Even getting money for as little as Rs. 10 gives users instant gratification that applies to the wallet and the UPI feature. These facilitators must start offering monetary rewards to win back customers quickly. Users who are used to receiving cashback in the form of money cannot go back because many promotional offers are not worthwhile for receiving cashback or any other reward in its place.

For many Indians, UPI has been the best option for P2P transfers and exchanges, and it is believed that users will continue to use it whether or not it has promotional offers. However, regarding cashback and reward programs, it is important to note that users will gravitate toward those that benefit them the most, something Google Pay should remember.

Google Pay has always been given preference over other applications in India, but to win back its annoyed users, it should at the very least start giving out rewards that are useful or could be combined with benefits since that is what rewards are meant to be, rather than continuing to favor promotions.