Google Pay wants to offer Indians their favourite investment option – gold

• Google Pay will soon start offering gold investment options on its platform.
• According to reports, it may also offer mutual funds and insurance plans.
• Paytm had introduced digital gold investment in India in April 2017.

Google Pay is stepping up its game to fight its Indian rivals Paytm and PhonePe. Following in their footsteps, Google Pay will now offer gold investment options to consumers.

According to reports, Google Pay is not just toying with the idea of selling digital gold but also mutual funds and insurance.

The digital payments wing of Google has already updated its terms of service to say “GAP shall mean the Gold Accumulation Plan provided by MMTC” and “Gold Account means such account on Google Pay which has been linked to the GAP.”

However, Google Pay’s gold offering comes two years late in the game. India’s payments unicorn Paytm had introduced digital gold investments to its users in April 2017.

In August 2018, Paytm had said that it is going to cross 1.5 tons in gold transactions through its platform with a 70% share of MMTC-PAMP’s virtual gold offerings in the country. MMTC-PAMP India Pvt. Ltd. is an industry leader to bring global standards of excellence to the Indian precious metals industry.

As of September 2018, Google Pay had announced that it has 25 million users in India.

It seems that payments platforms in India are in for a big fight with Google Pay’s plans to push boundaries and offer digital gold, mutual fund services and more – features which Paytm has already been offering. But the rigorous push from Amazon Pay, with its offline ‘scan and pay’ service too is going to make a dent into the consumer numbers of its rivals.

According to reports, the Chinese giant WeChat is also eyeing India’s payments market and aims to enter the segment in late 2019.

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