Some users are reportedly seeing a new feature cropping up for the Android Pay application, allowing them to see not only purchases made through the application but those made with registered cards outside of the app as well. That’s according to a new post from Redditor “shiruken,” who is listed as using a Nexus 5X via the site. Allegedly this is a feature and not a bug since there is reportedly an option to turn it off or on in the Android Pay application settings. The setting resides under a toggle switch labeled “Full Purchase History” which bears the description, ‘Show purchases not made with Android Pay for cards that support this feature.” The toggle switches themselves, meanwhile, also appear to be separated from card to card. That means history tracking could feasibly be turned on or off for each card individually, making it easier to only track what users want to track without scrolling through history from other cards.
It’s worth mentioning at this point that, as of this writing, there’s been no official announcement that any such feature will be coming to Android Pay. The Redditor in question clarified in comments that their Nexus 5X has Android Pay at build number v1.34.171856247 installed, running on top of Android 8.0 (Oreo). Responding commenters have indicated they don’t see the option despite having the latest version of the application and the latest OS version. So the whole thing may be best taken with a measure of skepticism until Google announces something officially. Having said that, new features aren’t always revealed at all before implementation, particularly when the search giant is running tests. So this could very well be a sort of soak test before the feature is revealed, aimed at checking for bugs and possibly garnering user feedback. It may also not be immediately noticeable or show up for some users since it is only supported by specific cards – in this case, shiruken noted that the card in question was issued by American Express.
If the report and accompanying screenshots turn out to be accurate, the purchase history option will undoubtedly be useful to many users. That’s because it effectively negates the need to navigate multiple applications in order to see what exactly has been purchased with a given card. It’s also a feature that’s been available with some cards on competing services, such as Samsung Pay, for some time now, and it would be good to see Google adding more features and support to catch up with its own digital payment services.
