Google Pay for Business and Google Spot launched to digitise small business owners

• Google’s announced two new products for small business owners at its annual Google for India event.
• Google for Business can onboard and verify businesses for digital payments remotely. This undercuts the need for an agent to come by and confirm the details of the application in person.
• Google Spot allows businesses to set up store fronts within Google Pay overcoming the obstacle for having to build a whole app on their own.

Tech giant Google will not expand its offerings in the fast-growing digital payments market in India.

It is launching two new products — Google Pay for Business and Google Spot for the Indian market.

Google Pay, powered by UPI, has 67 million monthly active users and its transaction value annualised for 2019 stands at $110 billion.

UPI transactions in India grew a massive 54 times over the last two years to 918 million in August 2019 from a mere 17 million in August 2017.

Yet, the market has a lot of room for growth, since not everyone is online and even the who are, aren’t necessarily using UPI to make digital payments.

How to activate Google Pay for Business

Google Pay for Business will allow vendors and merchants in India to digitize their payments by onboarding and verifying their businesses remotely.

By doing this, they can accept payments using BHIM UPI.

The Google Assistant will ask the business owner for his name and his business’ name. Then, she will ask him to show her the shop sign board to register the business address and show the shop from the inside to ascertain the business category.

In case a customer cuts in during the call, the Assistant is intelligent enough to recognise that there has been an interruption, and pauses the process.

So, no offline agent has to come verify documents and complete the onboarding process. The entire operation can take place online.

Google Spot

Local businesses aren’t normally tech-savvy enough to build their own app. Most of them lack the resources. The Spot Platform powered by Google Pay will allow such businesses to set up a storefront, within the Google Pay app.

Users can order remotely or even order when they get into the store to avoid long lines, and transact using Google Pay.

Businesses functioning through Google Spot will also have near field connectivity (NFC) chips in their packaging.

This means that if the recipient of the package were to tap their phone against the box, it would automatically open up the store front in Google Pay.

Google promises that any data and permissions of the user stay within the Google Pay and is not shared with a third party.

See also:
Google is adapting its technology for India and its many languages
Data starved Indians in remote areas can now call the Google Assistant hotline