Google Pay to pilot UPI for Kirana stores and small offline retailers

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Mar 18, 2019

Google Pay aims to engage customers of smaller brick-and-mortar retailers and is piloting Unified Payments Interface transactions.
 

Google Pay has already launched peer-to-peer transactions and bill payments in India and is now looking into UPI transactions at smaller offline retail outlets, two sources close to the matter told ET Bureau.

“It will bring the convenience of card payments onto the smart phone—the only thing required here will be, instead of the card swipe, customers will have to share the mobile number at the billing counter,” one of the sources told ET Bureau. People who use the service will then get a “collect” request on their Google Pay application and be able to make the payment by inputting the UPI PIN.

“There are small-scale pilots that are being run across retail stores in the country,” said one of the sources. “As of now there are no banner advertisements that are being done, only early adopters can test the product… The rollout will happen over the next few months.”
 
One source said that Google Pay plans to run “localised promotional campaigns” for consumers in the designated area. By geo-tagging shops, the business can identify customers in the surrounding areas and create targeted advertising campaigns. The business is working to create a variety of interlinked payment solutions for its Indian customers as it works to get more people connected to the internet in the country.