Google, Amazon and Facebook may use payments data to drive retail sales: Report

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Google recently launched the shopping tab on its search engine and Facebook’s Instagram will soon bring the shopping feature in India, which is already functional in 46 countries, a company spokesperson told the paper.

Google, Facebook and Amazon may soon use their payments transaction data to support and diversify their retail offerings, Business Standard reported. These companies entered India’s growing payments industry through the United Payments Interface (UPI).

Sundar Pichai-led Google recently launched the shopping tab on its search engine. Amazon India pumped Rs 400 crore in Amazon Pay in 2018, and partnered with many e-commerce platforms.

Facebook’s Instagram will soon bring the shopping feature in India, which is already functional in 46 countries, a company spokesperson told the paper.

The digital payments opportunity has interested the global technology giants, who are creating platforms for engagement of end customers, according to Kalpesh J Mehta of Deloitte.

“Payments is an essential part of commerce. Payment behaviour is seen to generate datasets, which lets such platforms enrich their customer profile that can be consolidated and monetised. This seems to have galvanised the interest of the large platforms,” he added.

The companies are also enhancing their payments offerings, including loans and cards. Payments data is used to push select retail products and the user history comes in handy to proposition financial products like loans, a banker said.

The number of UPI transactions in India has grown exponentially since its inception, with over 500 million in November worth over Rs 82,000 crore.

When companies enter the payments business, it helps them control a larger portion of the value chain and better services to their customers, Mahesh Makhija at EY India said.

India’s retail market was valued at Rs 49 lakh crore in 2016-17, according to a CRISIL report, of which only Rs 3.5 lakh crore was organised retail and Rs 70,000 crore was e-retail. Similarly, with payments, India’s personal expenditure was Rs 1.5 lakh crore, with over 90 percent of it happening in cash, as per a Deloitte report.