During its annual event in New Delhi, Google announced a number of new Google Pay initiatives aimed at helping small and medium-sized businesses accept digital payments in India.
Although 400 million Indian users are now online, most businesses in the country still remain unconnected. In the past, Google launched a number of tools in India to help businesses create an online presence but now the search giant has decided to expand its efforts and director and product manager for Google Pay, Ambarish Kenghe explained the company's reason for doing so, saying:
“India has more than 60 million small and medium-sized businesses, however only a fraction of them support digital payments. Imagine the transformation that is possible if more of these merchants could access payments online.”
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Currently it is quite difficult for Indian businesses to support online payments as an agent is required to come to their shop or business and do the verification for them in person.
Google Pay for Business
To help businesses accept online payments without having to go through an agent, Google has unveiled a new standalone app called Google Pay for Business which will allow them to use a remote video process for verification.
The company also showed off a new software platform called Spot that will enable businesses to create their own branded commercial fronts that customers can access through the Google Pay App. So far several businesses in India including UrbanClap, Goibibo, MakeMyTrip, RedBus and ET.Fit are already using this new feature.
Google has also developed a new kind of code called Spot codes, which resemble QR codes, and businesses can use these to allow customers to scan items in store and then pick them up later when it's more convenient.
Finally, the company is bringing a new feature to Google Pay which will let users discover entry-level and white-collar jobs directly through the app. Google has employed machine learning to better understand its users so that I can recommend the right kind of jobs for them.
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Via TechCrunch
