Google Pay looks beyond distribution, wants to create a credit ecosystem

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Mumbai: Google Pay has been distributing personal loans on behalf of its lending partners for several years and has now expanded its product suite to include credit cards. However, while personal loans are a third-party product, the credit card launch is the first native product introduced by the payments giant, which aims to go beyond distribution and create a credit ecosystem on the platform.

“We're not doing this simply because we have distribution power. If that was the case, I would have gone and signed up with a whole bunch of lenders three years ago," said Sharath Bulusu, senior director of product management at Google Pay or GPay. Bulusu views the credit card launch as an extension of the personal loan offering and an additional product within GPay’s credit ecosystem.

Started with one lending partner, the platform today sells personal loans on behalf of four banks and Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs). As of date, the platform allows users to tokenise and link their existing cards to their GPay account for ‘tap and pay’ transactions on the platform, but doesn’t offer its own cards. “We support all of that on GPay, but we never built a product ourselves.

Today, we're launching Flex, which is our first co-branded card on the RuPay network," he said. The first card under the ‘Flex’ programme is being launched in partnership with Axis Bank, and the platform will add more issuers in the coming months. “The way I see them as being connected is part of a goal to say that we want to develop the entire credit ecosystem," Bulusu told Mint, adding that eventually the platform could also look at other form factors for lending, such as credit lines on UPI.