Exclusive: Google Pay to add a digital storefront for offline businesses

Digital payments player Google Pay is looking at increasing use cases on its platform. After launching different online businesses within the Google Pay app, the PhonePe competitor is now in the process of adding a digital storefront for offline businesses, according to two people familiar with the matter.

This will allow offline stores to display their product catalogue on Google Pay for users to browse and be able to place an order following which the buyer can pick up the product from the nearest store, added one of the people cited above.

“Google has product listing ads and local inventory ads — both of these are exposed on Google Shopping and Google Search,” said the person mentioned above, requesting anonymity. “This will be extended to Google Pay as well exposing the catalogue of offline stores such as Croma and many others.”

Entrackr couldn’t confirm the exact timeline for this launch but the people mentioned above say this feature is expected to be live in the coming months. 

This move will essentially increase use cases for Google Pay — which is currently used only to make both peer-to-peer and merchant payments. Google recently added online merchants to the Google Pay app allowing users to be able to place orders directly through the app thereby functioning like a ‘super-app’ of sorts.

Known as ‘Spot’ — this includes the likes of Makemytrip, Eat.Fit, Oven Story, Urban Clap, among several others directly competing with PhonePe on this front as well which has a ‘Switch’ option allowing users to purchase products from several online merchants.   

Google’s Spot platform also lets offline businesses integrate with Google Pay so that when users step into the store, they can scan a physically-placed ‘Spot’ code allowing them to view the products and make payments. 

Google declined to comment for this story.

Google Pay was the technology giant’s foray into the payments space, that was introduced as ‘Tez’ in 2017. The application quickly gained traction amongst users for its cashbacks and gamified scratch cards. It has aggressively expanded over the last one year and competes with other payment apps like PhonePe and Paytm. As of September 2019, Google Pay claimed to have 67 million users in India.

Like other payment apps, the peer-to-peer payment does not make money for Google as the company explores to create new revenue streams for Google Pay via direct listing of offline stores. It has also been looking at adding other use cases to the platform including insurance and brokerage offerings. 

Moreover, in September 2019, the company announced the launch of a separate app for businesses which helps merchants launch digital payments faster. The firm also added a jobs platform to Google Pay for users to find entry-level jobs and part-time jobs.