NEW DELHI, India — Google executives announced at their annual event in New Delhi, that it will be bringing its mobile payments app — Google Pay — to businesses in India.
“India has more than 60 million small and medium-sized businesses, however only a fraction portion of them support digital payments. Imagine the transformation that is possible if more of these merchants could access payments online,” said Ambarish Kenghe, director and product manager for Google Pay.
One of the big challenges that is preventing these businesses to support online payments is the tedious process that is currently required for them to on-board a digital payments solution. “An agent is supposed to come to your shop and then they do the verification for you,” he said. Google has figured out a better way to address this challenge.
The Tech giant also unveiled Google Pay for Business, a standalone app that will enable businesses to accept online payments without having to deal with an agent. “Merchants will now be able to support digital payments at their own convenience through a remote video process within minutes,” he said.
Google introduced a software platform called Spot that will allow businesses to easily create their own branded commercial fronts that will be accessible to customers through Google Pay app. So for instance, if a restaurant has built its store front, users will now be able to see their offerings in Google Pay app itself. The company said several businesses in India like UrbanClap, Goibibo, MakeMyTrip, RedBus, and Eat.Fit are already making use of this feature.
“We hope these initiatives will help merchants adopt digital payments with more confidence, and help contribute to the long term growth of online financial services for the benefit of every Indian,” said Kenghe.
The company has also developed Spot codes, that are like QR codes, that a business could use to allow people in its store to quickly scan and pick the items from the store they wish to order and pay for it. “A customer can come back later and pick up their orders without waiting in long lines,” explained Arjita Madan, a product manager at Google.
Google is also bringing a feature that will enable users to discover entry-level and white-collar jobs through Google Pay app. “Jobs will be available as a Spot on Google Pay to help job seekers find and prepare for entry-level positions that fit their needs,” said Caesar Sengupta (pictured above), VP of Next Billion Users Initiative and Payments at Google.
He said Google is using machine learning to better understand its users, so that it recommends the right kind of jobs to them. A user only needs to provide two sets of information to get started with the feature: What kind of job are they looking for? And, how soon they want to land the job.
About two dozen companies including Swiggy, Zomato, Dunzo in delivery and logistics and 24Seven and Healthkart in retail are early partners of Google to use Pay’s jobs discovery feature.
