Paying Bills From Gmail Possible With Google's Pony Express Service

If you think paying bills online for a variety of services you use is a hassle, especially when it has monthly or quarterly charges (deadlines of which you tend to forget often), here's a news from Google that you might find super convenient. Folks over at #-Link-Snipped-# have found a document that talks about a secret Google project codenamed 'Pony Express'. Under this project, Google is developing a service that lets you pay your bills from within your Gmail account. This means that if the Pony Express service goes live, you will be able to receive your weekly or monthly bills in your Gmail inbox and will be given an option to pay for it right then and there without the need to hover to a different website. We are imagining cellular phone bills being paid from Gmail already.

In the document that was uncovered, a detailed process and walk-through of the Pony Express service has come to the light. Any Gmail account holder will be able to sign up for the service by filling up a form that asks for his or her name, postal address, Social Security number, Credit Card number, telephone service account number etc. These details will then be verified by a third-party company for identity checks. Google will be working with third-party vendors who can print and mail out bills on behalf of service providers, so that you receive the digitised version of bills and pay for them via Gmail.

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If you are thinking what's so new about e-billing or paying bills online, well, Google brings some smart features to the platform. First of all, the Pony Express service organizes bills automatically in a special Pony Express folder. Not just that, the service also lets you share a bill with another Gmail user and you can choose to automate the process. Moreover, there's a feature that displays customer service contact information for a given service provider. Lastly, there is also an option to capture a photo of a piece of mail to have it archived in digital form in Pony Express folder.

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That said, although this feature looks very convenient for frequent online bill payers, there's the other dark side attached to it. By signing up for the Google Pony Express service, users will be sharing their crucial data about credit card bills, payment history, what they are buying and where they are buying it from with Google. This could lead to Google refining how advertisements are targeted to individuals on Google, YouTube etc and further escalate the Gmail users' privacy concerns.

What are your thoughts about that? Share with us in comments below.

Replies

  • Coral Jain
    Coral Jain
    Wish they could find a way to pay household bills.

You are reading an archived discussion.

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