Underlying digital payments infra must meet upcoming rise: Google Pay exec

Points to the surge the number of UPI transactions, which are nearly doubling each year

Even as more people adopt digital payments and the number of unified payment interface (UPI) transactions reaching 4.2 billion in the month of October, it is important that the underlying infrastructure enabling these payments is prepared to take the further rise, said  Ambarish Kenghe Vice President, Product Management at Google Pay.

As the number of UPI transactions increases, nearly doubling each year, it is "critical that the infrastructure is ready for it. We (Google Pay) are of course preparing ourselves for it. But as an ecosystem, as a community, we have to make sure that everybody is ready on that front as an ecosystem. Like it takes a village to raise a child, it takes many, many, entities actually to make one transaction happen. So it is very critical that the infrastructure starts thinking about the ecosystem," Kenghe said.

As more and more people use digital payments, Google Pay is focused on making them even simpler, safer and create more economic opportunities for people across the country, he added.

At its annual event Google for India, which took place last week, Google Pay announced several new features and capabilities towards fulfilling these goals.

Google Pay will have an additional option of selecting Hinglish as a preferred language on the app. With this addition, users will be able to easily navigate the app in the language of their preference, with Hinglish as an option to mirror how a large section of Indians interact naturally.

It also announced the upcoming launch of speech to text, which allows users to use voice as an input to add account numbers into the app to initiate a payment and an additional feature to split bills for shared expenses within a group.

Over 10 million merchants use Google Pay for Business, and the app will allow merchants and micro-entrepreneurs to create an online presence directly from the Google Pay for business app.

The feature, called MyShop, will let merchants build a storefront with minimal effort, where they will be able to add images, descriptions of their products, and prices in an easy and intuitive way, then share the link, through their Business Profile, across Google platforms and beyond Google on social media.

Google Pay already allows merchants to set up their storefronts or lead to their websites through the Spot platform, which includes large businesses like Zomato, redBus, BookMyShow and others, to local grocery stores or eateries and other small businesses.

The difference between Spot and MyShop, said Kenghe, is that the new feature is even simpler to hop on to Google Pay. "Today with Spot, the way it works is that a merchant would host themselves, they probably have a website already, they will use that to create a Spot. That needs a little bit more know-how and they need to be a bit more sophisticated. But this (MySpot) is actually just a very easy way where you don't have to know any technology."