Now buy 'digital gold' from Google Pay; be ready to invest in mutual funds

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Representational Image
Representational Image

New Delhi : Google, these days is not limited to technological services only. Its payment app, Google Pay is penetrating deep into the Indian market. The US-based company has now introduced an option to buy gold on Google Pay platform. Besides, it is also planning to launch other wealth management products, including mutual funds, a source close to the development reports.

“Google’s biggest focus this year is to further establish its payments platform Google Pay,” said the first person cited above. “The company is adding more use cases to the platform and is tinkering with the idea of adding mutual funds, insurance, etc.”

To inform, Paytm was one of the first companies to launch “digital gold”, which was followed by PhonePe and a few others.

On March 27, Google Pay partnered with point-of-sale companies Pine Labs and Innoviti Payment Solutions Pvt. Ltd to strengthen its offline presence. Through this, Google Pay aims to establish a network of 200,000 stores across 3,500 towns and cities in India over the next few months. The rollout will begin with grocery chains Reliance Fresh and Vishal Mega Mart.

“We will be in the offline space in a big way,” said Ambarish Kenghe, director of product management, Google Pay India. “For now, a majority of them are large-format retail stores, but we will also look at neighbourhood kirana stores.”

It’s worth informing that Google Pay was launched in August 2017 and within a short span of time, the e-payment app claims to have 45 million monthly active users currently, up three times from 14 million as of March 2018.

Google Pay claims that over 2,000 online merchants, including the likes of Swiggy and BookMyShow, uses its services. But as the battle of digital payments has slowly been moving to the physical retail space, the company has sharpened its focus on expanding its offline merchant base.