Google Pay announces features similar to WhatsApp Business and PhonePe Switch

The rise of digital payments has been one of the significant parts of India growing internet economy story. In the last two years, the Unified Payment Interface (UPI)-based payment has witnessed over 5,000% growth.

Moreover, this has been largely driven by payment firms, including PhonePe, Google Pay and Paytm. Of the three top payment firms, Google Pay has made significant headways to be second top payment firm in the country.

To consolidate its market lead in the space, Google Pay has announced a series of features including Google Pay for business app, the Spot Platform for merchants and Tokenised cards on the app.

The Spot Platform will allow merchants to create branded commercial experiences. It would enable businesses to create mini-sites or built-in menu for Google Pay. UrbanClap, Goibibo, MakeMyTrip, RedBus, Eat.Fit and Oven Story are using the platform at the moment.

It also announced the tokenized card payment system, where a user will be able to make payment through digital token instead of using debit or credit card number.

The feature will be available for users in the next few weeks with Visa cards for HDFC, Axis, Kotak and Standard Chartered banks. Google Pay plans to add Mastercard and Rupay in coming months.

On the lines of WhatsApp Business, Google Pay has launched a separate app - Google Pay for Business. It allows merchants to list products, accept payments and highlights details such as brand name, website, address, amongst others.

Importantly, it also introduced a feature that enables users to discover jobs through the payment app. "Jobs will help job seekers find and prepare for entry-level positions that fit their needs," said Caesar Sen Gupta (pictured above), VP of Next Billion Users Initiative and Payments at Google in a blog post.

With these three new features, Google Pay is taking on PhonePe and WhatsApp Business together. Its Spot Platform appears similar to PhonePe mini-app play called 'Switch' where users can access 50 plus apps. Google Pay for Business' offerings is akin to WhatsApp Business.

Notably, PhonePe has already launched merchant-focused app - PhonePe for Business

Two years after making debut in India, Google Pay has outpaced PhonePe with 67 million monthly active users (MAUs). Recently, the Flipkart-owned firm had reported 55 million monthly active users in the country.

Since Google is widening its horizon beyond consumer payments and trying to encompass features offered by WhatsApp and PhonePe in its native app, it would be exciting to observe how such features help the company to grow further.

Update: The headline and story has been updated after getting inputs from PhonePe.