Google Pay is also going to implement its ‘Nearby Stores’ facility across the country. Through this facility, users will be able to get information about their nearest stores on Google Pay app.
Google India has come forward to provide loans to small traders in India. Google India said on Thursday that it will work with financial institutions to help provide loans to merchants through ‘Google Pay For Business’. This is part of Google’s initiative to bring small entrepreneurs affected by the Coronavirus epidemic to digital and bring them back to business.
Google said in a statement, ‘Google Pay for Business’ app has already connected about 3 million small traders in the country and now the company is working on the facility of lending them in the coming time. Google will work with financial institutions for this. This is necessary in times of economic uncertainty. ‘
Google said that its offer will go live soon. Google has also launched ‘Grow with Google Small Business Hub’ in India. With this, all small businesses are getting a platform where they are getting all the necessary products and tools to go digital. Here they can maintain the continuity of their business and also get quick help videos for learning digital skills. Google said that it will soon make it available in Hindi.
Nearby Store Feature
Apart from this, the company is also going to implement its ‘Nearby Stores’ facility across the country. Through this facility, users will be able to get information about their nearest stores on the Google Pay app. This facility is already available in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, and Chennai. In India, Google launched Google Pay for the Business app at the end of last year. Earlier in 2017, Google also launched Google My Business app in India.
Google Pay’s consumer loan product is live with banks such as HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Federal Bank, Axis Bank, and Kotak Mahindra Bank. The move comes at a time when big technology firms have turned aggressive in capturing India’s lucrative, yet underpenetrated SME sector, by offering a plethora of services.
The competition in the space has intensified with Facebook’s investment in Reliance Industries-owned Jio Platforms. Its popular messaging service, WhatsApp, will look to facilitate commerce through JioMart and integrate WhatsApp Pay, building an ecosystem for smaller retailers. Amazon Pay, too, has been pushing to bring offline merchants onto its platform.
Several other Indian fintech companies, such as Paytm, PineLab, BharatPe, and PhonePe, are also pushing out value-added services to attract unbanked and undigitized merchants – who are looking to take their physical business online – onto their respective platforms.
