Google just announced that it is merging all of its various payment programs into a single brand, called "Google Pay."

Google Pay will be a one-stop shop for all your Google Payment needs: NFC smartphone payments, P2P transfers, and Web payments. Google's payment solution site has already clicked over to the new branding, and we'd guess a rebrand of the Android Pay app won't be far behind. The branding should start popping up on store credit card machines, too.

By our count, this is Google's fifth payment brand. Google Checkout was Google's PayPal competitor, giving Web vendors a payment processing solution and customers an easy way to bring over their credit card and address data. Google Wallet was the first NFC payment system for smartphones, and later it was rebranded to Android Pay with the Wallet sticking around as a P2P payment system. Android Pay is currently Google's primary payment brand, but it's a bit awkward given it is branded as a platform-specific thing. It doesn't make sense to use Android Pay on a Chrome OS device, for instance. There's also "Google Tez," a payment brand in India, which lets users pay bills from companies directly from a bank account in addition to P2P and other payment modes.

So "Google Pay" is the new brand for every kind of payment Google offers—all without the platform-specific branding problems of Android Pay. Google says this is "just the first step for Google Pay" and it "can’t wait to share more."