According to multiple reports on the Google Pixel subreddit, some owners of the smartphone have received cashback rewards randomly in their Google Pay accounts. According to the shared screenshot, these monetary rewards are for “dogfooding the Google Pay remittance experience”, for which no explanation has been given on the app or otherwise.
A tweet thread by freelance tech journalist Mishaal Rahman reveals that US Pixel users are seeing these accidental rewards on the Google Pay app under the Rewards section in the Deals tab.
Interestingly, Rahman claims that Google Pay has fixed the error and withdrawn the money from his account after sending him a confirmation email. That said, they believe that those who withdraw their money before the fix get to keep it. However, this was not confirmed by Google.
Meanwhile, on the subreddit, there are reports of Pixel users mentioning amounts like $100, $240, and even $1,072 (roughly Rs. 87,700) that they received in error on the Google Pay app. “I chatted with Google as soon as it started for me. They advised that they are aware and the issue will be resolved in 24-48 hours. Some big accident seems to be happening from their side. I wouldn’t take out anything you can’t account for, if they reverse the charges,” said one of the users.
As far as dogfooding is concerned, which is the reason behind most of these awards, it is a method that allows Google to test real-world end-user experiences. Created for developers and beta testers, this process enables payment forms on Google properties like Play for Googlers. This enables local testing across a mix of devices, connections and OS versions.
