New Delhi: Google on Wednesday introduced a ‘wallet’ app in India that can hold a range of ticket bookings, but will not be linked to any payment interface.
Ram Papatla, general manager and India engineering lead for Android at Google, said that the company does not have any near-term plan to integrate its wallet and payments apps—which industry experts said was likely to avoid further anti-competitive investigations in India.
“With wallet, we’re looking to build a solution that will help bring all bookings together into one interface, which makes usage seamless for users. Right now, there are no immediate plans to merge Google Pay with Wallet, since Pay already has its own identity in the market. We also don’t have plans to link payments as an offering within Wallet, and our monetization plans are for the long term—after the number of partners working with us builds up,” Papatla said on the sidelines of a press conference in New Delhi .
A senior industry consultant, who requested anonymity since he works closely with Google and its associates, said that Google will likely have taken into consideration its ongoing anti-competition litigations in India before launching the app as a siloed, standalone service.
“Google Wallet accepts and holds payment cards in global markets, but left it out in India. One of the key factors behind this is most likely to be the fact that Google is already facing multiple litigations in India—in conflict with startups, and under the Competition Commission’s two orders in 2022. A separate investigation on its Play Store service fee is also underway, all under allegations that Google uses its market power to promote its own apps as primary modes of operations. Until these conflicts are resolved, it is unlikely that Google would create yet another instance that can be cited against them in court,” the consultant said.
Google’s launch marks a move away from its cross-industry rivals building super apps that integrate digital tokens for booked tickets and reservations, as well as support for tokenized storage of cards for accessing payments. Apple’s Wallet, for instance, offers a unified platform to save bookings and all cards to make contactless payments. Samsung’s proprietary Samsung Wallet interface also works similarly.
Papatla, however, stated that payments is a separate feature, and would continue to remain a siloed app for Google. “We see plenty of demand from users to organize their bookings, instead of scrambling last-minute through their email interfaces. You can never say never in terms of features that we can build in the long run, but for now, we don’t have any plan to bring payments as a feature within a single interface.”
Google Pay already supports a select number of credit and debit cards for contactless payments even in India. However, Papatla did not mention if there are any regulatory or policy challenges towards integrating a digital wallet service within Google’s payments interface.
To be sure, in October 2022, the Competition Commission of India (CCI) fined Google $273 million in two tranches, with one of the allegations served at the time stating that the company prioritized its own apps over others on the Play Store app marketplace. After the penalty and the CCI order, Google appealed against it at the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT). Hearings for the appeal concluded on Wednesday, with a verdict on Google’s submissions expected from NCLAT in July this year.
A senior competition lawyer who works closely with Google also agreed that Google perhaps doesn’t wish to court another controversy. “In case Pay and Wallet were integrated, arguments against Google at the court could have stated that Google is using its market power to onboard companies that would support its Wallet. This could have then been interpreted as Google using its market power to redirect more merchant payments through Google Pay—and in turn, use its market dominance to attract more customers to its payments app. With most CCI and NCLAT issues being sub-judice, it is not surprising that Google chose this route,” the lawyer added.
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