The Privacy of Your Wallet
Google Chrome includes a robust autofill system designed to make online shopping faster. You can save your credit card numbers securely within your Google Account, and Chrome will offer to automatically fill out checkout forms. To streamline this even further, Chrome includes an option that allows websites to actively query your browser to see if you have any payment methods saved on file.
If an e-commerce site detects that you have a saved credit card, it might aggressively push you toward a “Quick Checkout” flow, or alter its UI to encourage immediate purchases. From a privacy standpoint, allowing random websites to probe your browser for financial data—even just the existence of a saved card—is concerning. If you prefer to keep your wallet status strictly private and only use autofill when you explicitly click a text box, you should disable this probing feature.
How to Disable the Payment Method Check
You can stop sites from querying your browser in the Autofill settings.
- Open Google Chrome.
- Click the three vertical dots in the top-right corner and select Settings.
- In the left-hand sidebar, click on Autofill and passwords.
- Click on Payment methods.
- Look for the toggle switch labelled Allow sites to check if you have payment methods saved.
- Toggle the switch to the Off position.
From now on, your saved credit cards will remain hidden. Chrome will still allow you to use them to quickly fill out a checkout form when you manually interact with a credit card field, but the website itself will not be able to actively scan your browser for stored financial data beforehand.