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Google Wallet is now available in India | TechCrunch

May 8, 2024 1:50 PM0


Google on Wednesday launched its digital wallet in India with local integrations, nearly two years after the app was relaunched as a digital wallet platform in the U.S.

As TechCrunch exclusively reported last month, Google Wallet will operate in India alongside the existing Google Pay app, which will remain the company’s payments app in the country. Google had replaced its Pay app with Wallet in the U.S. in February.

“Google Pay is not going anywhere. Google Pay is our primary payments use case,” Ram Papatla, general manager and India engineering lead for Android at Google, said at a press conference in New Delhi. “Wallet is specifically tailored for thinking about the non-payment use cases.”

Google Wallet will let Android users in India store and access their boarding passes, gift cards, event tickets, and loyalty passes. You can add all of this through a QR code, barcode or link shared through Gmail, or by using a dedicated Add to Google Wallet button available on partner apps.

The app will also store transit tickets and let you create passes from any images containing a barcode or QR code, such as airline boarding passes, luggage tags or parking receipts.

Initially, Google Wallet will work with 20 brands, including PVR Inox, Flipkart, Air India, MakeMyTrip, Pine Labs and Ixigo. It has also onboarded local transport operators such as Kochi Metro, Hyderabad Metro, VRL Travels and Abhibus. Additionally, the company has partnered with system integrators Wavelynx and Alert Enterprise to let users store and access their corporate badges.

Android continues to dominate the smartphone market in India, with a 93% market share, per latest Counterpoint data shared with TechCrunch. In 2023, out of the 152 million smartphones shipped in the country, 140 million ran Android. Smartphone penetration rate for the year was 70%, up from 66% in 2021, the market research firm said.

All this gives Google a solid reason to launch Wallet in India. However, it would face competition from Samsung Wallet, which the South Korean company offers as a one-stop digital wallet and payments app. Apple also has its Wallet app for iPhone users in the country, though that app doesn’t have many local integrations. Instant messaging app WhatsApp also provides the ability to get virtual boarding passes and transit tickets from platforms like MakeMyTrip and state metro train operators.


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India scrambles to curb PhonePe and Google's dominance in mobile payments | TechCrunch

April 17, 2024 10:09 AM0


The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the governing body overseeing the country’s widely used Unified Payments Interface (UPI) mobile payment system, is set to engage with various fintech startups this month to develop a strategy to address the growing market dominance of PhonePe and Google Pay in the UPI ecosystem.

NPCI executives plan to meet with representatives from CRED, Flipkart, Fampay and Amazon among other players to discuss their key initiatives aimed at boosting UPI transactions on their respective apps and to understand the assistance they require, people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

UPI, built by a coalition of Indian banks, has become the most popular way Indians transact online, processing over 10 billion transactions monthly.

The new meetings are part of an increasing effort to address concerns raised by lawmakers and industry players regarding the market share concentration of Google Pay and PhonePe, which together account for nearly 86% of UPI transactions by volume, up from 82.5% at the end of December. Walmart owns more than three-fourths of PhonePe.

Paytm, the third-largest UPI player, has seen its market share decline to 9.1% by the end of March, down from 13% at the end of 2023, following a clampdown by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

An overview of India’s UPI ecosystem. (Image: Macquarie)

The conversation follows the central bank expressing “displeasure” to the NPCI over the growing duopoly in the payments space, a person familiar with the matter said. An NPCI spokesperson declined to comment.

In February, a parliamentary panel in India urged the government to support the growth of domestic fintech players that can offer alternatives to the Walmart-backed PhonePe and Google Pay apps.

The NPCI has long advocated for limiting the market share of individual companies participating in the UPI ecosystem to 30%. However, it has extended the deadline for firms to comply with this directive to the end of December 2024. The organization faces a unique challenge in enforcing this directive: It believes that it currently lacks a technical mechanism to do so, TechCrunch previously reported.

The RBI is also weighing an incentive plan to create a more favorable competitive field for emerging UPI players, another person familiar with the matter said. Indian daily Economic Times separately reported Wednesday that the NPCI is encouraging fintech companies to offer incentives to their users, promoting the use of their respective apps for making UPI transactions.


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