Google Pay Rewards: Ideas and Opinions

Google Pay, also known as GPay, is Google's digital wallet and online payment system. In India, GPay leverages the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a payment system developed by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). GPay is known for its speed, ease of use, and the inherent trust users place in Google for a payment service. However, over time, the "Rewards" program on Google Pay has become less exciting, often feeling unrewarding. We'll note down our thoughts and suggestions in this post.

Table of Contents

• Google Pay rewards
• Rewards Bazaar — The Problem
• Suggestions and Solution

Google Pay rewards

Users on Google Pay can earn rewards through various actions such as: a) regularly transacting with individuals and merchants, b) completing specific tasks, or c) reaching certain milestones. One of the earliest and most popular rewards has been the "Referral reward," awarded for inviting new users to join GPay. The rewards generally come in the form of special offers or cashback.

Rewards Bazaar — The Problem

Over time, as users become regular Google Pay users, cash rewards often become rare or even nonexistent. The Rewards section increasingly fills up with promotional offers, transforming it into what feels like a digital marketplace. These promotional offers (or vouchers) themselves are often quite ordinary. This diminishes the appeal of the "rewards" experience.

Today, we scratched a bunch of Google Pay reward cards, and the rewards look like—

Google Pay Rewards are filled with promotional vouchers.

Suggestions and Solution

We suggest the following changes to Google Pay's reward system:

Allow Users to Stop or Pause Promotional Vouchers: While these vouchers might generate revenue for Google, it's important to give users the options to opt out of or temporarily pause the promotional offers. This respects user preferences and prevents the "Rewards" section from feeling like unwanted.

Opt-in/Opt-out for Offer Categories: Instead of a flood of generic offers, users might be given option to select specific categories of offers they are interested in. This would ensure they only find promotions relevant to their needs.

Prioritise Uniqueness in Rewards: The excitement of a reward significantly diminishes if the same (or a better) offer is easily available on other platforms. Google Pay rewards should offer something distinctly unique or exceptionally appealing to create a sense of exclusivity.

[Special suggestion] Integrating Google's Own Services for Enhanced Value: On ​Google Pay, there are cash rewards and third-party vouchers. We suggest an integration of Google's own services into the "Rewards" program. This could transform the rewards from mere discounts into tangible, value-added benefits that are directly linked to the Google ecosystem. These rewards might include—

• Google Storage: Offering "1 GB Google storage" (general reward) or "5 GB Google storage" (special reward). These could be activated via a unique code and can be added to the user's Google account, providing immediate and practical value.
• YouTube Premium: A reward of "1 month of YouTube Premium" could be highly attractive, introducing users to ad-free viewing and other premium features, thereby encouraging greater engagement with Google's services.

We anticipate that these integrations would not only improve user satisfaction by delivering more personalised and valuable rewards but also reinforce the integration of Google Pay within the broader Google ecosystem.

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This page was last updated on: 27 May 2025
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NPCI's UPI Mandate Validity for General Payments and Consent Management

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an Indian public sector entity, owned by the Reserve Bank of India, has significantly empowered Indian citizens over the years. In the past decade, NPCI's diverse initiatives and services have revolutionised digital payments for individual and retail users across India.

Among the diverse services, NPCI provides "UPI Autopay," a feature that allows users to automate recurring payments from their bank accounts using UPI. While, this is a helpful method to settle payments there is an area that probably needs attention. 

UPI Mandate Validity

According to a circular NPCI/UPI/OC-123/2021-2022 (archived copy), the merchants are advised to create the recurring payment mandates with a maximum validity of 30 years from the start date, a mandate widely followed by the services. 

We have tried the autopay options of several popular services. The following table shows the UPI mandate duration for some of these, including OTT platforms—

Merchant	Autopay Duration
Discovery+	10 Years
Gaana	15 Year
JioHotstar	30 Years
Netflix	30 Years
SonyLiv	10 Years
Tata Play	13 Years
The Times of India+	10 Years

Our review of various products and services show a fixed mandate duration of 10–30 years. There is no option for customising this mandate. Groww, an asset management company states— "The AutoPay duration is set to 30 years to ensure a smooth repayment experience." 

We can categorise an auto-payment into two categories—

1. Loans and Obligations (Existing Products): Autopay mandates for ongoing financial obligations such as housing loans, personal loans, and car loans, where a user avails the service first, and gradually makes payments.
2. General and Usage-Based (Flexible Services): Autopay for services where payment is tied to usage. Both the merchant and the user can terminate the service at any point.

Now—

While a 30-year mandate might be justifiable for long-term obligations like loan repayments. For simple services such as OTT subscriptions a forced 10 or 30 year UPI mandate seems excessive. Although users can cancel these subscriptions anytime, there should be an option for customized consent.

Suggestions

We suggest to categorise payments as "Payment First, Service Later" (PFSL) and "Service First, Payment Later" (SFPL). We could also classify them as "Obligation" and "General," or based on the total payment amount.

For PFSL, especially simple subscriptions,  any mandate exceeding 5 years is unnecessary. Importantly, users must have an option to customize the mandate duration for the payments.

This could be implemented with a "minimum" and a "suggested" mandatory duration. For example, if "ServiceA" sets a 10-year mandate with a 2-year minimum, during activation, users should be able to customise the duration to any period between 2 and 10 years.

"I wanted a simple OTT subscription,
and they want a 30 years' promise."

Conclusion

The suggested consent management option will be in alignment with the Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA) bill. More importantly this will enable users to make more informed decisions about their subscriptions and payments.

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This page was last updated on: 17 August 2025
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