Google Pay and Pine Labs have tied up to give Google Pay access to 330,000 POS terminals in 3,000 towns in India, the companies said in a statement. These payments will be made through UPI at POS counters, using the Google Pay user’s phone number, which can be authenticated by the user and processed via the app. Pine Labs’ POS solutions are used across electronics, food & beverage, fashion, pharmacy, telecom and airlines merchants. It claims that over 100 million users bought products and services from its merchant network last year, and with the Google Pay tie up, it expects to reach newer audiences. In August last year, Google Pay partnered with Pine Labs and BillDesk, to make Google Pay available in more physical stores. Last week, we reported that Google Pay was testing UPI based transactions with unspecified point-of-sale (POS) providers to onboard retail merchants. It was running small scale pilots with retail stores, to rollout over the next few months, and gain momentum in this market. Google did not specify which cities it is testing this in. In India, Google Pay launched in September 2017, and claims to have 12 million users, 25 million monthly active users and 1.2 million businesses. According to a Businessline report, Google Pay's monthly user base has gone up from 14 million in March 2018 to 45 million in March 2019. Its annualised run-rate was $81 billion this month. It also claims to be used in 300,000 cities, towns and villages in India,…
