Google Pay will always partner with existing financial system: Biz head

Sajith Sivanandan also dwells on instances where certain offerings have been reported as 'Google Pay's offerings', fueling misinterpretation

Google Pay on Friday said that the company’ role is firmly as a partner to the existing financial system that brings unique skill sets and offerings to drive further adoption of digital payments in the country.

Sajith Sivanandan, Business Head, Payments and NBU, Google APAC in a blogpost said: “In every geography where Google Pay is present, our stance is consistently one of partnering with the existing financial services and banking systems to help scale and enable frictionless delivery of financial products and services and contribute to the goal of financial inclusion.”

He added, “There have been a few instances where these offerings have been reported as ‘Google Pay’s offerings’ which fuels misinterpretation. To be clear, we have always looked at our role firmly as a partner to the existing financial system that brings unique skill sets and offerings to drive further adoption of digital payments in the country.”

Recently Equitas Small Finance Bank had announced that the banks deposit offerings will be available on Google Pay. The bank in a statement said that it will allow users to open FDs on Google Pay. However, this made many assume that Google Pay may be entering other financial segments other than payment.

Equitas joining Google Pay is nothing new. The company’s Spot offering has many other financial services provider as well. “In 2019, we had announced the launch of the Spot Platform on Google Pay, a surface for merchants of all types - offline or digital native, small or large, across use cases - to find payment-ready users,” he added.

Today Google Pay has close to 400 merchant spots on its platform, and has witnessed that financial product offerings perform especially well, with offerings from Spot experiences delivered by financial services players like CashE, Groww, 5paisa, Zest Money etc. seeing significant growth and engagement from users on Google Pay. This engagement underscores that payments platforms are a great surface to deliver financial services to users across the country.

“This vision has been consistent since our launch in India and several of our offerings are built on top of NPCI’s pioneering UPI payment network and infrastructure, which has grown over 190X in the last 4 years, to processing over Rs 6 trillion in value today,” said Sivanandan.

At its core, Google Pay is a simple and secure mobile app for sending and receiving money, providing the functionality of a seamless payment experience, which is critical for consumers and merchants.

With more and more users embracing Google Pay in India, Spot platform works as an additional discovery channel for many businesses to build and offer innovative new experiences to users to drive adoption of their services. The use cases span across ticket purchase, food ordering, paying for essential services like utility bills, shopping and getting access to various financial products.