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Some users report receiving more than $1,000 in erroneous rewards.
According to several reports on the Google Pixel subreddit, some of the smartphone's owners have randomly received cashback rewards in their Google Pay accounts. According to screenshots shared, these monetary rewards are for "dogfooding the Google pay remittance experience", for which there is no explanation on the app or otherwise.
A tweet thread by freelance tech journalist Mishaal Rahman shows that these accidental rewards are visible to American Pixel users on the Google Pay app, under the Rewards section in the Deals tab.
Interestingly, Rahman claims that Google Pay has fixed the error and taken the money back from his account after sending him an email confirming the same. That said, he believes those who took out their money before the fix get to keep it. However, the same was not confirmed by Google.
On the subreddit, meanwhile, there are reports of Pixel users mentioning amounts such as $100, $240, and even $1,072 (around Rs 87,700), which they have received erroneously on the Google Pay app. "I chatted Google as soon as it started rolling in for me. They advised they were aware and the issue would be resolved in 24-48 hours. Appears to be a big mishap on their part. I wouldn't take anything out that you can't account for, in case they reverse the charges," one of the users said.
As for what dogfooding means, which is the reason behind most of these rewards, it is a method that allows Google to test real-world end-user experiences. Meant for developers and beta testers, this process enables the form of payment on Google properties such as Play for Googlers. This enables local testing across a mix of devices, connections and OS versions.