Google Pay is expanding in India with a new platform for merchants. The Spot Platform will empower businesses owners to create branded commercial experiences that bridge the offline and online worlds.
At the launch, merchants will be able to use Spot to use the services of providers like UrbanClap, Goibibo, MakeMyTrip, RedBus, Eat.Fit and Oven Story.
“We’re excited to see how other organizations use Spot to create new experiences, reach new customers and make life easier and more convenient for the Indians who rely on them,” said Caesar Sengupta, vice-president of Google’s Next Billion Users Initiative and Payments initiative.
The tech titan also announced another slew of Google Pay add-ons. It will make payments available to debit and credit card holders through tokenized cards, meaning card holders can use digital tokens on their smartphones rather than their actual card number.
Tokenized cards on Google Pay will be rolling out in the next few weeks with Visa cards for HDFC, Axis, Kotak and Standard Chartered banks. It will also launch similar support to cover Mastercard and Rupay and more banks in the coming months.
The announcement comes as digital payments are on the rise in India. KPMG recently revealed that in the last three years, the number of merchants accepting digital payments has jumped from 1.5 million to ten million.
“We launched Google Pay to support this growth, giving Indians a simple, safe and reliable way of making and receiving payments,” Sengupta said. “In the last 12 months alone, we’ve grown more than three times to 67 million monthly active users, driving transactions worth over $110bn on an annualized basis, with hundreds of thousands of offline and online merchants.”
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