If you are a Google Pay user, you might be lucky to get some free money in your wallet. You may doubt how possible it’s to receive free money, but that is true. Users of the payment service are receiving cash credits of up to $1,000 in their app accounts for no justifiable reasons.
The debacle started on Tuesday, when Google Pay account holders started receiving credit into their mobile app wallets, and some took to social media announcing the influx of cash in to their wallets.
One of the users, Mishaal Rahman, a tech journalist in a tweet with screenshot of the credit said: "Uhhh, Google Pay seems to just be randomly giving users free money right now."
Other surprised Google Pay-ers in a thread, Redditors also confirmed receipt of the launch money, and some asking how to cash in on the free goodies.
"I just got almost $100 in six different cashback rewards for 'dogfooding the Google pay remittance experience,''" wrote one user. "What does this mean?" they asked.
What really happened?
According to Ars Technica, Google Pay screwed up its "reward" program. It's a rewards program that offers users opportunity to earn a discount or the odd dollar or two for regularly using the service.
But in this case, these cash rewards were meant to be doled out to employees for "dogfooding," which in IT slang, is when devs use their own product (like an app) for a while to test it, usually before it's released.
These compensatory payments got sent out to a bunch of random Google Pay users. Google, in an email it sent to the surprised recipients days later, clarified that it was an "error."
"You received this email because an unintended cash credit was deposited to your Google Pay account," the company wrote, as quoted by Ars. "The issue has since been resolved and where possible, the credit has been reversed."
Unfortunately, those who left the money sitting in their app accounts had the credits reversed. Why those who were fast enough to cash out the credits right away, Google says, "well played" — you earned it, buddy (for some cosmic reason).