Users of Google Pay will now be allowed to add debit and credit cards to the payments app, which previously only allowed UPI-based payments from bank accounts.

At an event in Delhi, Google explained that it uses a technology called tokenisation for debit and credit cards wherein the app uses a digital token to authenticate the cards rather than giving the actual card number to the vendor or merchant.

The tokenised card option will be rolled out on Google Pay in a few weeks time. However, it currently only supports Visa cards from Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and SBI. It is working on adding support for Mastercard and RuPay cards as well.

Offline Spots Platform

The company also announced a new Spots platform for Google Pay which allows merchants and companies to create physical QR-Code and NFC-based payments cards for offline payments. Using the platform, merchants can build customisable experiences over Google Pay which allows a retail store to add its entire catalogue.

These come with Spot Cards which will enable customers to get direct access to the experience that merchants create for them. This feature is used by large enterprises like MakeMyTrip and Google Pay aims to allow small merchants to go to third parties to build a Spot with a "few lines of code."

Google has partnered with Eat.Fit, MakeMyTrip, RedBus, Urban Clap and other companies for the Spot platform.

Google Pay For Business

The company also announced 'Google Pay for Business' for merchants and businesses. It is a separate app that lets merchants verify themselves and use Google Pay for payments.

Google said that it has 67 million Google Pay users in India.