NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, October 25, 2018

By Emily Bary

Alphabet Inc.’s Google has dominant positions in search, advertising and mobile devices, but the company has had to play from behind when it comes to mobile payments.

Google is very much still interested in enabling financial transactions, however, and the company’s payments general manager Caesar Sengupta said Tuesday that partnerships have helped it achieve early success in emerging markets.

Speaking at a keynote session during the Money20/20 financial-technology conference in Las Vegas, Sengupta walked through Google’s payments efforts in India. Google Pay, the company’s mobile-money platform there has more than 30 million monthly active users and a $40 billion annual run rate in volume, he said.

Photo courtesy of Meena Kadri.