As the tech giant expands its Indian payments app, processing approximately 4 billion transactions monthly, and makes its strongest push for financial inclusion in the South Asian market, Google has partnered with banks and other lenders in India to enable credit lines for individuals and merchants on the Google Pay app.
The business has teamed with Axis Bank to enable the lender to provide loans to individuals using Google Pay, and it has worked with ICICI Bank to provide merchants with credit lines on top of UPI. In an interview with TechCrunch, Google Pay Vice President Ambarish Kenghe said.
Despite the fact that about a billion people in India have bank accounts, few of them deposit enough money in them for credit bureaus to create useful profiles on them. Because of this, the credit bureau data book for India is still quite thin, which makes it harder for banks and other financial institutions to gain the trust necessary to give credit to the great majority of people living in the most populous country in the world.
Kenghe is personally connected to this task. The Google executive revealed to the crowd on Thursday at the company’s annual India event that his uncle had helped out financially when he needed to go to college in the past. It’s reasonable to believe that I wouldn’t be standing here today without that, he said.
“We consider payments to be the geo-shifting of money. Credit, or time-shifting money, would be extremely beneficial. This generates growth, development, and opportunities,” he said to TechCrunch.
To be clear, neither Google nor its underwriters are providing the loan themselves. “We are facilitating credit, streamlining the procedure, and collaborating with the sector to guarantee accountability,” he stated. He also promised that Google will make sure it doesn’t put lenders at needless danger or over leveraged borrowers.
In an effort to meet merchants’ small-ticket credit needs, the company is also facilitating lenders to offer sachet loans to retailers.
In order to provide support for the Rupay card network and enable users to conduct merchant transactions directly through their UPI credit line, Google has also partnered with HDFC Bank. According to Google, it has also teamed up with ICICI Bank to provide consumers with credit lines.
The second-most-used app for transactions on the UPI network, a payments system developed by a group of banks, is Google Pay. According to the corporation, there are around 4 billion transactions made on the app each month. Google’s decision to allow credit to customers is a victory and a pressing necessity in India, where people and businesses have historically been forced to rely on unscrupulous lenders.
