By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 26th, 2024
According to the recently revealed information, Google Pay transactions can now be authenticated with just a fingerprint or face.
Is what is seen by many as an innovation that will spark a revolution in the electronic commerce industry, Google Pay will now accept biometric security confirmations instead of the usual PIN code that people are already used to on the platform.
Google Pay is formerly known as the Tez App which has already made its niche in the payments industry in terms of processing of transactions for users. SMS notifications on all transactions done within the Google Pay app recently became available and this has enhanced the ability of users to know the status of their finances with the app.
This addition was made in the latest version of the app which was recently updated (version 2.100). Support for the Application Programming Interface (API) was added and users of the service can use either their thumbprint or faces for recognition to enable transactions to go through. This, of course, presents many advantages to users as the burden of remembrance of PIN codes now becomes history with biometric features.
The Android 10 OS is currently the only OS that has the biometric features updated there but it will be coming to android 9 OS as well. This feature is available in the U.S. markets but in places like Asia, biometrics is yet to be deployed.
Google Pay in India
Google is also in talks with Indian startups that do retail such as Perpule and Peel-Works and others that offer insurance, money management, and other financial services to create a self-sustaining ecosystem for the users.
Perpule is a self-checkout solution at grocery stores, restaurants, and office cafeterias and other retail environments.
Peel-Works, on the other hand, offers a whole set of tools that make it easy for small and medium merchants to be able to run their businesses effectively.
Google Pay is also looking at breaking into the financial advisory market with partnerships and linkages with startups to enable users to have access to financial services such as insurance, mutual funds and provide wealth management advisories which will further increase the dominance of the world’s largest search engine and technological powerhouse.
Payment services are already looking at also increasing the innovative ways that they allow users to be able to make purchases. Google Pay and PhonePe are already allowing users to be able to buy “Digital Gold” from Paytm using their payment services as a case in point.
PhonePe is already offering other services other than digital gold and tax savings in a bid to be able to offer services to other apps becoming one big “super app” in the process.
Already PhonePe has a huge presence in India with 55 million monthly active users while Google Pay had already reached 67 million monthly active users in India alone.