GFF 2024: Google Pay adds UPI Circle, eRupi, ClickPay QR, more features

Google Pay goes big at GFF 2024: Google made a slew of announcements to make its peer-to-peer digital payments app, Google Pay, more convenient at the ongoing Global Fintech Fest (GFF) 2024. The Google Pay app will soon add at least six new features, including UPI Circle, Pay QR, and eRupi (UPI Vouchers). The company said the new feature will “bring ease, convenience, and simplicity to the way India interacts with payments and finance.” Let us take a look at each service coming to Google Pay soon.

UPI Circle

Launched recently by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), UPI Circle allows you to add contacts, like family members or friends, to access your UPI (Unified Payments Interface) account. “Getting more Indians to pay safely for bills or shop offline and online by delegating to a trusted contact is the core ethos behind this innovation,” said Google in a blog post. Essentially, you can add contacts as “secondary” users on Google Pay to create a ‘UPI Circle’ and let them have access to your UPI account. You can delegate secondary users to have partial access to your account, wherein you retain full control and approve each payment request by them. Alternatively, you can also give full controls to contacts with a monthly limit of up to Rs 15,000.

UPI Vouchers or eRupi

You can soon use Google Pay to create UPI vouchers, also known as eRupi, with a pre-assigned amount and give them to anyone who wants to pay digitally. These prepaid vouchers are linked to their mobile number and need a UPI-based platform to work. “Beneficiaries of these vouchers will be able to use any supporting UPI app including Google Pay to pay for all their supported merchant transactions without even linking their bank account on UPI.”

pay QR

Google Pay has partnered with NPCI Bharat Billpay to launch support for pay QR, allowing users to pay their bills by simply scanning a QR using any existing scanner. Billers can generate customised QR codes at a bill account level and display them at their point of sale (PoS), email, physical, or other digital properties. The latest bill is automatically generated as soon as you scan the QR code.

Prepaid Utilities Payment

The partnership between Google Pay and NPCI Bharat Billpay has also resulted in another feature called Prepaid Utilities Payment, which allows recurring payments categories in the app. You can discover your prepaid utility providers or aggregators, such as your housing society, link your electricity or gas billing accounts, and pay them using UPI in the Google Pay app.

Tap and Pay with RuPay cards

Google Pay is also expanding tap-and-pay support to RuPay cards. Currently available for Mastercard and Visa, the pay and tap feature lets you make contactless payments of up to Rs 5,000 without requiring a PIN. The payments are secured by tokenisation so your card details are never stored in the app.

Autopay for UPI Lite

UPI Lite feature on Google Pay will soon support autopay for automatic refilling of the wallet once the balance falls below a certain amount. “Users can now use UPI Lite without worrying about running out of Lite balance.”