Google Pay mistakenly rains free cash on netizens

Go on, take the money and run (Not actual legal advice)

Google has — unfortunately for some — fixed a bug in its Pay mobile app that was handing out free money to people.

The cash seems to have been dolled out at random to lucky Google Pay users, who took to the internet to say they had landed bonanzas ranging between $12 and $1,000.

One Redditor said they received six cash-back payments totaling almost $100. Another in the same thread claimed they received $1,072, and said they transferred about $700 to their bank account.

It turns out that the windfall was down to errors on the part of Google Pay. However, anyone who spent the funds or transferred them to a bank account will get to keep the free money. Those who didn't, and left the balance in the mobile payment app, will apparently lose it.

In a tweet, journalist Mishaal Rahman said the cash appeared on the app's Deals tab. He got an unexpected $46 bonus from Google.

"I suspect this is an error, so that money is just gonna sit in my account for now lol," he said.

He later shared a screenshot of a Google Pay email he received. "We have resolved an error that deposited unintended cash credit to your account," that memo read.

"You received this email because an unintended cash credit was deposited to your Google Pay account," the message continued. "The issue has since been resolved and where possible, the credit has been reversed. If we were able to reverse the credit, it has already been reflected in your account activity. If we were not able to reverse the credit, the money is yours to keep. No further action is necessary."

Google also apologized "for any inconvenience," although we can't help think that the only inconvenience here was in not cashing in on Pay's error in time.

Google this week declined to explain to us how this happened, how many users received credits, and how much money the bug unintentionally paid out to Google Pay users. We're sure the moneybags internet giant can afford it.

Some even speculated this was a dogfooding exercise gone wrong at Google.

Hopefully, for those who didn't take the money and run, the karmic reward turns out to be better than a free night out on Google's dime. ®