Google Pay and the useless error message

1 min read

I was buying something online, using Firefox on my desktop. When I got to the checkout page, I thought I’d use the ‘Checkout with GPay’ button.

Except, when I clicked on it, I got this message:

An error message saying ‘To make this purchase using Google Pay, open this website in a browser app, such as Chrome or Safari. [OR_BIBED_15] OR_BIBED_15’
What is that picture meant to be telling me, Google?

Eh? I am in a browser. The message doesn’t mean I need on a mobile, because the same thing works in desktop Chrome or Edge (activating some weird modal dialogue on top of the page).

There isn’t even a link to go back to the retailer’s site so that I can try a different payment method.

(Even more confusingly, the Google Pay documentation suggests that error OR_BIBED_15 has a cause unrelated to the error message.)

Well, that’s a button I won’t bother clicking on again.