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Google Wallet app appears on Play Store listings; hints at launch in India soon
According to reports, Google Wallet may soon be available in India and enable local integrations. The app was recently spotted in the Play Store listings.
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Google Wallet might soon debut in India, boasting local integrations tailored to the Indian market
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This also hints at the potential coexistence of Google Wallet alongside the UPl-powered Google Pay
A sneak peek of Google Wallet, which the firm accidentally uploaded to the Google Play store in India, indicates that the app will eventually make its debut there, over two years after it was relaunched as a digital wallet platform in the United States.
While the software cannot be downloaded directly from the Play Store in India at this time, users may still install it manually and link their bank cards to enable contactless transactions.
Google Wallet app on the Play Store shows local integrations with SBI and PVR
This suggests that to serve Indian consumers' demands, the app will function in conjunction with Google Pay. Screenshots of the Indian airline Air India, the state-owned bank State Bank of India, and the multiplex chain PVR Inox were included in the Google Wallet listing that TechCrunch discovered last week.
This suggests that loyalty points can be redeemed through these companies. However, a cached version of the Play Store listing shows four screenshots meant especially for Indian viewers. Google did clarify to TechCrunch that, for the time being, at least, Google Pay will remain available in the nation as a stand-alone app. This is in contrast to almost every other market, where Google has been combining the Pay and Wallet experiences into a single Wallet app.
Google pledged to improve Google Pay and provide easy and safe access to digital payments, even if it did not confirm that the Wallet app would soon be available in India. This raises the possibility of Google Wallet coexisting with Google Pay, which is powered by UPl. This would increase competition among digital payment platforms in India, where existing players include Paytm, PhonePe, BHIM, and Amazon Pay.
In contrast to its American counterpart, Google Pay in India facilitates payments using the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), a system supported by the Indian government. This is one of the reasons Google Pay differs in India, and if people are already using it, it may decide to keep providing them with an alternative.
With Walmart's PhonePe being the most popular UPI app in India, Google Pay appears to have a strong incentive to be supported while providing Wallet users with digital wallet experiences. According to information released by National Payments Corporation of India, the parent company of UPI, the Google Pay app started more than 5 billion transactions in March, valued at over $83 billion.
Know more about Google Pay
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