Google Unveils Tokenised Cards & Spot Platform In India 

by Darshit Singh 4 years ago Views 3290

Google in a bid to penetrate further into the Indian market made three key announcements at its annual ‘Google For India’ event in Delhi on Thursday. 

Firstly, Spot platform which will allow more merchants on their platform and make them familiar with online payments. Secondly, the introduction of tokenised cards. Last but not least, a research lab in Bengaluru focused on Artificial Intelligence.


The Spot platform offers more than just jobs. Spot allows third parties to build customized experiences inside Google Pay. Spot includes Spot Cards, which have both QR codes and NFC antennae on them to allow access to users. Tapping a Spot Card or scanning the code via an Android phone opens Google Pay and shows the customer the experience the merchant has created. For instance, MakeMyTrip’s Spot Cards will show its ticketing platform inside Google Pay. MakeMyTrip, Urban Clap, Eat. Fit and RedBus are among the first partners for this platform.

Tokenised card provides a hassle-free experience to those who are fed up of entering their card details and CVV to purchase a product. Google will use the tokenisation technology, which hides the card number from a merchant and allows instant sharing of a digital token to authenticate transactions. 

The Mountain View, California-based company will also open a research lab in Bengaluru focusing on artificial intelligence applications in fields like health care and education and will offer public Wi-Fi to villages in three regions. 

The search engine giant also announced Vodafone-Idea Phone line with Google Assistant. The feature would enable a user to simply call and talk to the Assistant. This would be especially helpful for those who do not have proper access to the internet as well as those who have 2G phones or feature phones.

Google Pay will face tough competition from the likes of Paytm & PhonePe. As of June 2019, Paytm had an estimated 350 million registered users.

Investment banking company, Credit Suisse estimates that the Indian digital payments market will touch $1 trillion by 2023 from about $200 billion currently. Neighboring China is far more advanced with a mobile payments market worth more than $5 trillion already.

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