Google eyes wider user base, more revenue streams from Google Pay platform

Personal loans, gold investment services already entail a charge; firm is in talks with financial institutions to expand scope of token payments

Aiming to grow its customer base in the country and increase the volume of annual transactions, Google seeks to further monetise services on its payments platform Google Pay.

It is already charging a fee for services related to personal loans and gold investments, and has a revenue generation model in place for travel and recharge services.

“In case of recharges and travel, there is already an established commercial model in place; but we don’t charge the consumers or the merchant as of today; it works on other parameters. For the personal loans and gold investment services, there is a certain fee involved,” Sharath Bulusu, director of product management at Google Pay said.

Bulusu, however, did not specify the sectors or the services which the global technology giant is eyeing to open up new revenue streams for the company.

“At this point, I really can’t say if it will be on new embedded services or the existing ones. We are watching and observing this space,” he said.

As part of its near-term strategy in India, Bulusu said that the focus of the company is to further the customer base and promote UPI transactions. It is also in talks with financial institutions to expand the scope of token payments.

Token payments involve a complex unique algorithm that is generated by the issuing banks and financial institutions to each debit or credit card. This algorithm, which Google Pay calls a token, is used to facilitate payments, without the user having to fill in card details.

Google Pay registered a surge of around 49 per cent in its unique user count, which reached 67 million in September from 45 million in March. Its total transactions during the same period were up about 36 per cent, to $110 billion in September from $81 billion in March.

“In June this year we had rolled out our drive to tap businesses. The spike in our user base to a large extent can be attributed to this drive. Also, existing customers have also used the platform more which contributed to this surge”, Bulusu said.

The official said that in the near future, while Google Pay will be focussed on increasing the customer base, it is also working on building better user experiences and strengthening the technological back-end to support the projected spike in user numbers.

Asked about Google Pay’s compliance on localising data, he said that the transition towards localising data is underway.