Google is working on a new product called Pony Express that lets you pay your pay their bills within Gmail, rather than having to go to a physical location to complete a payments. The service is set to hit the market later this year. Google has in the recent past articulated its need to have all the information in the world organized online and this project is a huge step in this direction. The other project working towards meeting this target is the Google Books project in which over 30 million volumes of books have so far been digitized.
Such a service would allow Google collect data could be used to refine how advertisements are targeted to individuals on Google, YouTube and partnering sites. The service works in such a way that the user signs up using their Gmail account and thus provides personal information such as their name, address and credit card number or telephone number. Once a user is authenticated, he or she can start receiving bills or other mail in Gmail or the Inbox app (Google’s new email app).
Google plans to organize the bills in a special Pony Express folder. The user then choose to pay a bill right from within Pony Express, using a link with a bank account or a debit card. There plans to link the service with Google Wallet. The also allows users to share the bill with another user, pulls up customer service contact information for a given service provider and offers capability to take a photo of a piece of mail to have it archived in digital form in Pony Express.
