Google rolls out ‘Google Pay for Business’ offering to merchants in Pune
Pune, November 5, 2019: In continuation of Google’s India’s commitment to digitally empower India’s small and medium business community with initiatives like Google My Business service, Google today announced the rollout of its merchant-focused Google Pay app – Google Pay for Business – in Pune. Google Pay for Business is a free and easy way for small and medium-sized businesses to adopt digital payments in a hassle-free way that vastly reduces the hassle and time required in the completion of paperwork and verification.
With Google Pay, customers can now pay directly at the merchant store using QR codes or phone numbers. It also allows small businesses to accept digital payments without incurring any additional cost. Google Pay for Business transfers each rupee that the merchant earns, directly into their UPI-linked bank account.
Encouraging local merchants to explore the benefits of digital payments, Sajith Sivanandan, Managing Director and Business Head – Google Pay and NBU initiatives said, “India’s SMBs are a core pillar of the Indian economy and with Google Pay for Business, we aim to ease their path to going digital and tapping the massive consumer opportunity with digital payments, created on the back of the massive growth of UPI in the country.”
Today over 3,000 online merchants spanning the gamut of food delivery (Swiggy, Zomato, FreshMenu), travel (Uber, RedBus, AbhiBus, GoIbibo, Yatra), movie and event tickets (BookMyShow) and even trading and investments (Zerodha), accept Google Pay. To further expand merchant based digital payments, Google Pay has collaborated with Pine Labs and Innoviti to enable UPI payments across a massive footprint of POS terminals across the country, spanning 200,000 stores in over 3,500 cities and towns.
Elaborating on Google Pay’s security features, Sivanandan said, “Security is at the heart of Google Pay. Google’s expertise in security and machine learning backs every transaction, and it’s working 24/7 to help detect spam, fraud, prevent hacking, and verify and protect the identity of every user. Google Pay works closely with well-known banks and follows the same safety and security best practices as banks, along with an added layer of Google security, such as passcodes or fingerprint IDs, as well as a Google PIN code.”
Google Pay is India’s fastest growing digital payment product. Being used across 3 lakh cities, towns and villages, over 60% of Google Pay transactions emerge from beyond the metro cities. Apart from popular use cases like bill payments and mobile recharges, users on the platform can also make payments to users outside Google Pay through the external payments feature – a secure process that allows users to transfer money, with a bank account number and IFSC code,
instead of a mobile number.
In the past year, Google introduced a range of new offerings for users on the app. For example, its collaboration with IRCTC allows users to book train tickets directly from the app without incurring any transaction fees. Furthermore, users can search, browse, confirm or cancel train tickets, view seat availability, and travel times, right within the app. Further, in collaboration with MMTC-PAMP, Google Pay users can also buy and sell Gold for as little as INR 1. The digital gold is held safely in MMTC-PAMP’s secure vaults. Users can sell the digital gold at any time at the day’s trading price or redeem and opt for the physical delivery of the gold, right at their doorstep.
