Google Pay brings Flex, Pocket Money and customer ratings for Indian users

Google Pay on Wednesday (December 17, 2025) announced new updates in the payment app for Indian users which includes introduction of a new Axis Bank co-powered Flex credit card, Pocket Money feature, customer ratings, Google Ads and prevention of screen-sharing scams.

Google Pay said that in eight years, more than 530 million users have transacted on the platform and over 23 million merchants have on-boarded on Google Pay for Business.

Flex by Google Pay, is a UPI-powered, digital, co-branded credit card card built on RuPay network. “A big focus for us over the last few years has been enabling responsible access to credit. {With Flex} the idea is to serve more customer segments, geographies, and use cases over time,” said said Sharath Bulusu, Senior Director, Product Management, Google Pay to The Hindu.

He said that Flex is designed primarily for everyday transactions rather than only large-ticket purchases. “Google Pay will also give rewards and repayments. Rewards, users earn them instantly after every transaction. Rewards are earned as Stars, where one Star always equals one Rupee. That baseline value is guaranteed,” he told.

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For repayment, Google Pay will allow EMI conversions directly within the app. Users can compare options such as three-month or six-month repayment plans and choose what works best for their cash flow.

Within the UPI Circle feature, Google Pay introduced Pocket Money feature, which allows parents to grant access to their children with built-in supervision. Parents can set a monthly limit of up to ₹15,000 or they can choose to approve every transaction request initiated by the child.

Parent will receive notification for every transaction the child makes. Parents can track all transactions in their transaction history, and can also pause access to Pocket Money from their own app.

Now Google Pay users in India can rate their merchants and give them stars, which will be fed into Maps to make the process of rating more seamless and credible.

To help small businesses, it has launched a GenAI powered Google Ads experience within the Google Pay for Business app. It helps merchants instantly generate their own ad, preview it, and launch a campaign in minutes.

On safety, Google Pay claims that it averted financial fraud close to ₹13,000 crore in last year. “Since October 2024, we’ve displayed 4.1 crore warnings against transactions suspected to be potential scams, safeguarding users directly at the point of transaction.”

To safeguard their users further, Google Pay said that for users on Android 11 and above, a prominent alert will now appear instantly if they attempt to open Google Pay with screen-sharing being active on a call with an unknown caller. It allows users with a one-tap option to immediately terminate the call.

It claims to have scaled their agentic AI chatbot within Google Pay Help to engage with users who report fraud incidents. “This approach has helped increase scam detection rates by 21%,” said Sharath.