Google Announces Spot Platform to increase Google Pay’s offline presence
At its fifth Google For India event in India, the search giant had a bunch of announcements involving the release of new additions and improvements in its services lineup. One of these has to do with Google Pay — Google’s digital wallet and payment platform. Emphasizing on how the service helped millions of users to perform transactions on a daily basis, it announced a new service, the Spot Platform.
Spot Platform is essentially a digital front for businesses that enables merchants to bridge the gap between online and offline worlds by creating their own customized branded commercial payment experiences. Additionally, businesses can also use the platform to engage with customers and inform them of new products, products back in stock, etc. Similarly, customers can also easily interact with businesses and discover and buy products directly without having to go through the tedious process of installing an app and setting up the account details.
With Spot Platform, users can discover a Spot online or offline, and transact with a merchant securely using the Google Pay app. What’s interesting is that the Google Pay app shows relevant Spot to users on their home screen when they need it. For instance, a user could get a suggestion for their favorite restaurant Spot during their lunch hours on their home screen. Google is using HTML & Javascript to allow developers to integrate the Spot Platform into their mobile websites or Progressive Web Apps PWA) by simply adding a few lines of JavaScript, which would allow merchants to have a scalable and seamless digital payment experience.
For businesses (with physical locations), the Spot can turn out to be a game-changer, as they can now place a Spot Code at specific locations. A Spot Code is basically a combination of a custom visual code and an NFC tag, which customers can then either Scan the Spot Code or Tap (on phones with NFC), to visit the business’s Spot on Google Pay.
Google says privacy and security are core to the Spot Platform and that the data and device permissions provided by the user are in no way shared with the merchant Spot without their consent. Additionally, it also says that users can also decide to grant, modify, or review permissions for each individual Spot at any point in time.
Starting today, the Spot Platform will be rolling out to all Google Pay users. And to broaden its horizon, Google will be offering the early access program to more developers and businesses to allow them to create their own Spot. Some of the partners that have already created a Spot thus far include: eat.fit, Goibibo, Oven Story, MakeMyTrip, RedBus, and UrbanClap.
