Tag Archives: google pay

The digital wallet is here to stay. It’s time for your business to cash in.

Posted by Cole Stuart, Google Pay Product Marketing

Digital wallets are rapidly growing in popularity, as adoption from users and acceptance from businesses has expanded significantly over recent years. As we have seen in recent months, this trend towards digital payments over traditional card or cash transactions has only accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 40% of global ecommerce spending in 2019 came from a digital wallet like Google Pay, Apple Pay, or Alipay according to the FIS Global Payments Report1. This year, over one billion shoppers are expected to make a digital wallet transaction.

We believe this is just the beginning. In the next five years, digital wallet adoption is expected to increase dramatically. Worldpay’s white paper explores how adopting digital wallets can benefit businesses like yours. Some of the key takeaways are highlighted below.

What digital wallets have to offer

Digital wallets, such as Google Pay, have the ability to not only improve your business outcomes, but also provide unique value to everyday consumers. Benefits include:

  • Higher conversion rates
  • Seamless checkout experience
  • Reduced cart abandonment
  • Advanced security and protection
Google Pay checkout screen

Digital wallets vs. ordinary card transactions

Real tangible benefits are found when businesses adopt a digital wallet. Findings include:

  • Digital wallet transactions showed significantly higher acceptance rates and significantly lower chargeback rates for businesses compared with ordinary card transactions2.

  • Even though transaction volumes for digital wallets were lower than cards in most markets, the value of US digital wallet transactions were on average 25% greater than ordinary card transactions in 20192.

How to bring Google Pay into your business

Ready to adopt a digital wallet and give your customers a seamless transaction experience in just 4 easy steps? Sign up with the Business Console here and visit our developer's site for more information. You can also find the full whitepaper here, alongside previous case studies that prove how Google Pay has helped drive lasting impact for other businesses.

Chart of Business Console process

Liked our whitepaper? Reach out directly to the contacts below.

Google:

Steve Klebe

Head of PSP Partnerships, Google Pay

[email protected]

Worldpay:

Rami Josef

Senior Product Manager, Worldpay

[email protected]


[1] - Worldpay by FIS Global Payments Report
[2] - Sourced from Worldpay’s Worldwide Payments Gateway (WPG) using data from Q4 2018 through Q1 2020

What do you think?

Do you have any questions? Let us know in the comments below or tweet using #AskGooglePayDev.

Google Pay, built for Singapore

When people in Singapore open the Google Pay app on their Android or iOS device, they’re met by some familiar sights—from the distinctive outlines of the Merlion and the Marina Bay Sands building to the island’s much-loved otters. The goal isn’t just to make Singaporeans feel at home. It’s part of a bigger effort to design Google Pay with local needs in mind.


Our mission with Google Pay is to make money simple, secure and helpful for everyone. Singaporeans were already using Google Pay to tap onto public transport and pay for purchases at more than 80,000 checkout counters. Now, together with our partners, we’re improving and expanding the Google Pay app in Singapore to better reflect the growing role of digital payments in peoples’ lives. 


Money made simple with more banks


To make Google Pay more helpful, we’re building on Singapore’s national real-time payment service—known as PayNow. 


With the PayNow integration, you can send money to anybody in Singapore, even if they’re not on Google Pay. All you need is their phone number. It’s a feature that we introduced for OCBC customers earlier in the year—we’re now extending it to customers of DBS Paylah!and Standard Chartered Bank.  


OCBC, DBS Paylah! and Standard Chartered Bank customers can also use their linked accounts to pay any business that has a PayNow QR code displayed, allowing merchants to receive payments in their corporate bank accounts.


Built around you, your friends and the places you pay 


Payments don’t take place in isolation—they’re part of the daily interactions you have with friends, family and local businesses. 


We built Google Pay around these everyday relationships, to make it quick and easy to transact with the people and businesses you know. In just a few taps, you'll be able to see a past payment with a business, or find a friend to pay. Plus, sending money to someone new is as easy as sending a chat message—just start entering their phone number.


And now we’re taking it a step further—Singapore is the first country where Google Pay users can form groups to organize and manage payments, as well as divide bills and other joint expenses within the app.

GPay SG screenshots

Just for Singapore: food and movies

With Google Pay you can already browse cuisines and order takeout or delivery with the Order Food feature. Now that restaurants have resumed dine-in services, we suspect the new Split a Bill feature will be particularly useful for requesting and receiving payments after a meal with friends. 

Singaporeans also love catching a movie, so it’s no surprise there was a collective cheer when cinemas re-opened recently. With the new Google Pay, you can skip the box office queue by booking a movie ticket and reserving your seats instantly within the app. We've just added Golden Village locations, in addition to Shaw Theatres—giving moviegoers a total of 174 screens to choose from across Singapore.

A more rewarding Google Pay

To make it fun to use Google Pay, the app gives out rewards for transactions in the form of virtual scratchcards (you ‘scratch’ them to find out how much you’ve won). You can earn scratchcards with instant cashback rewards on qualifying transactions—and we’re extending the bonuses when you introduce a friend to Google Pay

GPay SG screenshots 3

The ways Singaporeans manage their money and pay for the things they need are changing—and so are their expectations of payment apps. We’re looking forward to continuing to improve Google Pay for everyone in Singapore, building on everything we’ve announced today.  


Google Pay picks Flutter to drive its global product development

Posted by David Ko, Engineering Director; Jeff Lim, Software Engineer; Pankaj Gupta, Director of Engineering; Will Horn, Software Engineer

Three years ago, when we launched Google Pay India (then called Tez), our vision was to create a simple and secure payment app for everyone in India. We started with the premise of making payments simple and built a user interface that made making payments as easy as starting a conversation. The simplicity of the design resonated with users instantly and over time, we have added functionality to help users do more than just make payments. Today users can pay their bills, recharge their phones, get loans instantly through banks, buy train tickets and much more all within the app. Last year, we also launched the Spot Platform in India, which allows merchants to create branded experiences within the Google Pay app so they can connect with their customers in a more engaging way.

As we looked at scaling our learnings from India to other parts of the world, we wanted to focus on a fast and efficient development environment, which was modern and engaging with the flexibility needed to keep the UI clean. And more importantly one that enabled us to write once and be able to deploy to both iOS and Android reaching the wide variety of users.

It was clear that we would need to build it, and ensure that it worked across a wide variety of payment rails, infrastructure, and operating systems. But with the momentum we had for Google Pay in India, and the fast evolving product features - we had limited engineering resources to put behind this effort.

After evaluating various options, it was easy to pick Flutter as the obvious choice. The three things that made it click for us were:

  • We could write once in Dart and deploy on both iOS and Android, which led to a uniform best-in-class experience on both Android and iOS;
  • Just-in-Time compiler with hot reload during development enabled rapid iteration on UI which tremendously increased developer efficiency; and
  • Ahead-of-time compilation ensured high performance deployment.

Now the task was to get it done. We started with a small team of three software engineers from both Android and iOS. Those days were focused and intense. To start with we created a vertical slice of the app — home page, chat, and payments (with the critical native plugins for payments in India). The team first tried a hybrid approach, and then decided to do a clean rewrite as it was not scalable.

We ran a few small sprints for other engineers on the team to give them an opportunity to rewrite something in Flutter and provide feedback. Everyone loved Flutter — you could see the thrill on people’s faces as they talked about how fast it was to build a user interface. One of the most exciting things was that the team could get instant feedback while developing. We could also leverage the high quality widgets that Flutter provided to make development easier.

After carefully weighing the risks and our case for migration, we decided to go all in with Flutter. It was a monumental rewrite of a moving target, and the existing app continues to evolve while we were rewriting features. After many months of hard work, Google Pay Flutter implementation is now available in open beta in India and Singapore. Our users in India and Singapore can visit the Google Play Store page for Google Pay to opt into the beta program and experience the latest app built on Flutter. Next, we are looking forward to launching Google Pay on Flutter to everyone across the world on iOS and Android.

Google Pay image Google Pay image Google pay image Google Pay image

We hope this gives you a fair idea of how to approach and launch a complete rewrite of an active app that is used by millions of users and businesses of all sizes. It would not have been possible for us to deliver this without Flutter’s continued advances on the platform. Huge thanks to the Flutter team, as today, we are standing on their shoulders!

When fully migrated, Google Pay will be one of the largest production deployments on the Flutter platform. We look forward to sharing more learnings from our transition to Flutter in the future.

Google Pay picks Flutter to drive its global product development

Posted by David Ko, Engineering Director; Jeff Lim, Software Engineer; Pankaj Gupta, Director of Engineering; Will Horn, Software Engineer

Three years ago, when we launched Google Pay India (then called Tez), our vision was to create a simple and secure payment app for everyone in India. We started with the premise of making payments simple and built a user interface that made making payments as easy as starting a conversation. The simplicity of the design resonated with users instantly and over time, we have added functionality to help users do more than just make payments. Today users can pay their bills, recharge their phones, get loans instantly through banks, buy train tickets and much more all within the app. Last year, we also launched the Spot Platform in India, which allows merchants to create branded experiences within the Google Pay app so they can connect with their customers in a more engaging way.

As we looked at scaling our learnings from India to other parts of the world, we wanted to focus on a fast and efficient development environment, which was modern and engaging with the flexibility needed to keep the UI clean. And more importantly one that enabled us to write once and be able to deploy to both iOS and Android reaching the wide variety of users.

It was clear that we would need to build it, and ensure that it worked across a wide variety of payment rails, infrastructure, and operating systems. But with the momentum we had for Google Pay in India, and the fast evolving product features - we had limited engineering resources to put behind this effort.

After evaluating various options, it was easy to pick Flutter as the obvious choice. The three things that made it click for us were:

  • We could write once in Dart and deploy on both iOS and Android, which led to a uniform best-in-class experience on both Android and iOS;
  • Just-in-Time compiler with hot reload during development enabled rapid iteration on UI which tremendously increased developer efficiency; and
  • Ahead-of-time compilation ensured high performance deployment.

Now the task was to get it done. We started with a small team of three software engineers from both Android and iOS. Those days were focused and intense. To start with we created a vertical slice of the app — home page, chat, and payments (with the critical native plugins for payments in India). The team first tried a hybrid approach, and then decided to do a clean rewrite as it was not scalable.

We ran a few small sprints for other engineers on the team to give them an opportunity to rewrite something in Flutter and provide feedback. Everyone loved Flutter — you could see the thrill on people’s faces as they talked about how fast it was to build a user interface. One of the most exciting things was that the team could get instant feedback while developing. We could also leverage the high quality widgets that Flutter provided to make development easier.

After carefully weighing the risks and our case for migration, we decided to go all in with Flutter. It was a monumental rewrite of a moving target, and the existing app continues to evolve while we were rewriting features. After many months of hard work, Google Pay Flutter implementation is now available in open beta in India and Singapore. Our users in India and Singapore can visit the Google Play Store page for Google Pay to opt into the beta program and experience the latest app built on Flutter. Next, we are looking forward to launching Google Pay on Flutter to everyone across the world on iOS and Android.

Google Pay image Google Pay image Google pay image Google Pay image

We hope this gives you a fair idea of how to approach and launch a complete rewrite of an active app that is used by millions of users and businesses of all sizes. It would not have been possible for us to deliver this without Flutter’s continued advances on the platform. Huge thanks to the Flutter team, as today, we are standing on their shoulders!

When fully migrated, Google Pay will be one of the largest production deployments on the Flutter platform. We look forward to sharing more learnings from our transition to Flutter in the future.

Google Pay plugin for Magento 2

Posted by Soc Sieng, Developer Advocate

Google Pay plugin for Magento 2

We are pleased to announce the launch of the official Google Pay plugin for Magento 2. The Google Pay plugin can help increase conversions by enabling a simpler and more secure checkout experience in your Magento website. When you integrate with Google Pay, your customers can complete their purchases quickly using the payment methods they’ve securely saved to their Google Accounts.

Google Pay in action.

The Google Pay plugin is built in collaboration with Unbound Commerce, is free to use, and integrates with popular payment service providers including Adyen, BlueSnap, Braintree, FirstData - Payeezy & Ucom, Moneris, Stripe, and Vantiv.

Installation

The Google Pay plugin can be installed from the Magento Marketplace using this link or by searching the Magento Marketplace for “Google Pay”.

Refer to the Magento Marketplace User Guide for more installation instructions.

Getting started

To get started with the Google Pay plugin, you will need your Google Pay merchant identifier which can be found in the Google Pay Business Console.

Your Merchant ID can be found in the Google Pay Business Console.

Configuring the Google Pay plugin

Once installed, you can configure the plugin in your site’s Magento administration console by navigating to Stores > Configuration > Sales > Payment Methods and selecting the Configure button next to Google Pay.

Click on the Configure button to start the setup process.

Testing out Google Pay can be achieved in three easy steps:

  1. Google Pay credentials: enter your Google Pay merchant ID (available from the Google Pay Business Console) and merchant name.
  2. Payment gateway credentials: select your payment gateway from the list of payment gateways supported by the Google Pay plugin.
    1. Choose the Sandbox environment for testing purposes.
    2. Enter your payment gateway’s credentials into their respective form fields.
  3. Google Pay settings: enable Google Pay and choose the card networks that you would like to accept.

You can optionally try out some of the advanced settings that provide the ability to customize the color and type of Google Pay button as well as enabling Minicart integration, which is recommended.

Checkout the Advanced Settings to further customize how and where the Google Pay button is presented in your store.

If your payment provider isn’t listed as an option in the payment gateway list, check to see if your payment provider’s plugin has built-in support for Google Pay.

Launching Google Pay for your website

When you’ve completed your testing, submit your website integration in the Google Pay Business Console. You will need to provide your website’s URL and screenshots to complete the submission.

Summing it up

Integrating Google Pay into your website is a great way to increase conversions and to improve the purchasing experience for your customers.

Find out more about Google Pay and the Google Pay plugin for Magento.

What do you think?

Do you have any questions? Let us know in the comments below or tweet using #AskGooglePayDev.

Future-Proofing Payments in an Uncertain World | Virtual Fireside Chat with Checkout.com CTO Riaz Bordie

Posted by Jose Ugia and Checkout.com

We sat down with Riaz Bordie, the CTO of Checkout.com, a leading international provider of online payment solutions, to get his advice to merchants and the developer community on how to think about future-proofing payments in the uncertain world we live in today.

Jose Ugia: What advice do you have for merchants and developers as it relates to payments in these difficult times?

Riaz: Merchants are seeing a polarizing impact of COVID-19 on their businesses. For those who have an online presence, you’re either seeing a lull in traffic or a spike.

If you’re a merchant who’s seeing traffic dwindle, it’s more important than ever to make sure every transaction counts. If you used to see 50 transactions a day and now you see 10, you want to make sure all 10 deliver. Work with your Payment Service Provider (PSP) to make sure your approval ratios are as optimal as possible -- a legitimate customer who gets declined incorrectly may not return to purchase as they have in the past. If your PSP supports alternative payment methods like Google Pay that decrease friction at checkout and local payment methods if you’re selling internationally, that’s ideal. Keep an eye on your PSP’s stacks and uptimes to make sure you’re not missing out on sales due to outages or technical issues.

If you’re a merchant seeing a spike in traffic, that’s great news! But it’s important to note that a sudden traffic increase without proper operational and infrastructure planning can lead to fraud spikes, decreases in approval ratios, and downtime. With higher sales velocity, risk related issues will multiply. You’ll see more attempted fraud as fraudsters take advantage of unsuspecting consumers, higher payment declines resulting from outdated issuer risk modeling and excessive chargeback levels, subscription cancellations, buyer’s remorse, among others. How are your payments infrastructure and operations equipped to handle all of this?

Make sure your infrastructure is capable of scaling up. If you don’t have autoscaling, you’ll need a team and processes in place to scale infrastructure for traffic spikes, and keep in mind this may get harder with people working remotely. Work your PSP and other providers to optimize your payments, risk models and chargeback handling during this challenging time.

For both types of merchants, it’s important to pay closer attention to performance of your payments system. This includes both ensuring that processes are working in an optimal way - especially given remote working situations and also ensuring that you are seeing efficiencies at scale.

Jose Ugia: How did you think about building a payments infrastructure that was scalable and future-proof at Checkout.com?

We knew in the beginning we wanted a unified API, which through a single integration gives a merchant access to any market via a range of payment methods and other facilities. We’ve worked hard to get acquiring licenses in as many markets as possible so we can bring acquiring in-house, which in turn gives us greater visibility on the entire payment flow. We have also invested in a gateway that can be consistently deployed in local geographies so that whether the merchant is in Dubai or Singapore, they are getting the most optimal traffic flow.

Any engineer knows that tech breaks. Those who win have a better plan for dealing with breakage efficiently, to consistently maintain high levels of service. We spend a lot of time and resources on making sure our stack is resilient and we have the right operational processes in place to both proactively monitor for potential issues and respond correctly when they come up.

Jose Ugia: Speaking of where things are headed, where do you see the future of payments going from a payment service provider perspective?

A few key trends I see:

Risk & Fraud Detection. AI/ML is improving every aspect of tech. Fraudsters will get smarter but so will fraud prevention - it’s a cat and mouse game. In payments, sophisticated risk engines offering ML-based transaction scoring and highly customizable rules builders, among other features, will get better at detecting fraud without compromising sales.

Global acceptance will continue to be complex but paramount. Offering a variety of payment methods is table stakes these days. More and more, we’ll see that local payment methods aren’t the alternative but instead the primary way consumers pay. For example, you need to have Giropay if you’re selling in Germany and Alipay if you’re selling in China if you want a high conversion rate. Ensure that you and your local entities have an optimized setup with your acquirer (ideally domestic where possible) focused on achieving the lowest costs and highest approval rates.

Embedded infrastructure. Merchants - especially enterprise players - will want increased visibility and more control on optimizing their payment systems. We offer this level of insight and flexibility to our merchants today via our APIs around risk, reconciliation, disputes, etc. But we’re headed toward a world where dedicated infrastructure will become part of the package and allow for complete data separation and zero contention.

Jose Ugia: How do you think these changes of payments infrastructure will impact consumers downstream?

Convenience is king among consumers. I believe that COVID-19 will accelerate the move toward a contactless payments society, with consumers relying more on digital wallets and opportunities to pay through their devices. I personally no longer take my wallet out with me when I leave the house. A couple of years ago that felt like a conscious decision - now it’s just part of everyday life to rely solely on my smartphone to pay.

In some regions like MENA, which has typically been a cash-on-delivery society, we’re seeing more merchants close off cash and impose digital payments, opening up more adoption of upfront e-commerce payments. As mandated payment methods begin to change consumer behavior (studies say it takes 2 months to change a habit), new ways of paying will be here to stay, even beyond COVID-19.



- - - - - - - - - - -


Interested in learning more about Checkout.com’s services or speaking to a payments expert on how to optimize your payments stack? Contact us here. For Google Pay related requests and questions or to start your Google Pay integration, visit the Google Pay Business Console.

Simpler Google Pay integration for React and web developers

Posted by Soc Sieng, Developer Advocate

The Google Pay API enables fast, simple checkout for your website.

The Google Pay JavaScript library does not depend on external libraries or frameworks and will work regardless of which framework your website uses (if it uses any at all). While this ensures wide compatibility, we know that it doesn’t necessarily make it easier to integrate when your website uses a framework. We’re doing something about it.

Introducing the Google Pay button for React

React is one of the most widely-used tools for building web UI's, so we are launching the Google Pay Button for React to provide a streamlined integration experience. This component will make it easier to incorporate Google Pay into your React website whether you are new to React or a seasoned pro, and similarly, if this is your first Google Pay integration or if you’ve done this before.

We’re making this component available as an open source project on GitHub and publishing it to npm. We’ve authored the React component with TypeScript to bring code completion to supported editors, and if your website is built with TypeScript you can also take advantage of type validation to identify common issues as you type.

Get real time code completion and validation as you integrate with supported editors.

Getting started

The first step is to install the Google Pay button module from npm:

npm install @google-pay/button-react

Adding and configuring the button

The Google Pay button can be added to your React component by first importing it:

import GooglePayButton from '@google-pay/button-react';

And then rendering it with the necessary configuration values:

<GooglePayButton
  environment="TEST"
  paymentRequest={{ ... }}
  onLoadPaymentData={() => {}}
  />

Try it out for yourself on JSFiddle.

Refer to component documentation for a full list of supported configuration properties.

Note that you will need to provide a Merchant ID in paymentRequest.merchantInfo to complete the integration. Your Merchant ID can be obtained from the Google Pay Business Console.

Your Merchant ID can be found in the Google Pay Business Console.

Support for other frameworks

We also want to provide an improved developer experience for our developers using other frameworks, or no framework at all. That’s why we are also releasing the Google Pay button Custom Element.

Custom elements are great because:

Like the React component, the Google Pay button custom element is hosted on GitHub and published to npm. In fact, the React component and the custom element share the same repository and large portion of code. This ensures that both versions maintain feature parity and receive the same level of care and attention.

Try it out on JSFiddle.

Google Pay JavaScript library

There's no change to the existing Google Pay JavaScript library, and if you prefer, you can continue to use this directly instead of the React component or custom element. Both of these components provide a convenience layer over the Google Pay JavaScript library and make use of it internally.

Your feedback

This is the first time that we (the Google Pay team) have released a framework specific library. We would love to hear your feedback.

Aside from React, most frameworks can use the Web Component version of the Google Pay Button. We may consider adding support for other frameworks based on interest and demand.

If you encounter any problems with the React component or custom element, please raise a GitHub issue. Alternatively, if you know what the problem is and have a solution in mind, feel free to raise a pull request. For other Google Pay related requests and questions, use the Contact Support option in the Google Pay Business Console.

What do you think?

Do you have any questions? Let us know in the comments below or tweet using #AskGooglePayDev.

Simpler Google Pay integration for React and web developers

Posted by Soc Sieng, Developer Advocate

The Google Pay API enables fast, simple checkout for your website.

The Google Pay JavaScript library does not depend on external libraries or frameworks and will work regardless of which framework your website uses (if it uses any at all). While this ensures wide compatibility, we know that it doesn’t necessarily make it easier to integrate when your website uses a framework. We’re doing something about it.

Introducing the Google Pay button for React

React is one of the most widely-used tools for building web UI's, so we are launching the Google Pay Button for React to provide a streamlined integration experience. This component will make it easier to incorporate Google Pay into your React website whether you are new to React or a seasoned pro, and similarly, if this is your first Google Pay integration or if you’ve done this before.

We’re making this component available as an open source project on GitHub and publishing it to npm. We’ve authored the React component with TypeScript to bring code completion to supported editors, and if your website is built with TypeScript you can also take advantage of type validation to identify common issues as you type.

Get real time code completion and validation as you integrate with supported editors.

Getting started

The first step is to install the Google Pay button module from npm:

npm install @google-pay/button-react

Adding and configuring the button

The Google Pay button can be added to your React component by first importing it:

import GooglePayButton from '@google-pay/button-react';

And then rendering it with the necessary configuration values:

<GooglePayButton
  environment="TEST"
  paymentRequest={{ ... }}
  onLoadPaymentData={() => {}}
  />

Try it out for yourself on JSFiddle.

Refer to component documentation for a full list of supported configuration properties.

Note that you will need to provide a Merchant ID in paymentRequest.merchantInfo to complete the integration. Your Merchant ID can be obtained from the Google Pay Business Console.

Your Merchant ID can be found in the Google Pay Business Console.

Support for other frameworks

We also want to provide an improved developer experience for our developers using other frameworks, or no framework at all. That’s why we are also releasing the Google Pay button Custom Element.

Custom elements are great because:

Like the React component, the Google Pay button custom element is hosted on GitHub and published to npm. In fact, the React component and the custom element share the same repository and large portion of code. This ensures that both versions maintain feature parity and receive the same level of care and attention.

Try it out on JSFiddle.

Google Pay JavaScript library

There's no change to the existing Google Pay JavaScript library, and if you prefer, you can continue to use this directly instead of the React component or custom element. Both of these components provide a convenience layer over the Google Pay JavaScript library and make use of it internally.

Your feedback

This is the first time that we (the Google Pay team) have released a framework specific library. We would love to hear your feedback.

Aside from React, most frameworks can use the Web Component version of the Google Pay Button. We may consider adding support for other frameworks based on interest and demand.

If you encounter any problems with the React component or custom element, please raise a GitHub issue. Alternatively, if you know what the problem is and have a solution in mind, feel free to raise a pull request. For other Google Pay related requests and questions, use the Contact Support option in the Google Pay Business Console.

What do you think?

Do you have any questions? Let us know in the comments below or tweet using #AskGooglePayDev.

Our commitment to India during COVID-19 and beyond

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact the health and lives of many across the country, requiring all of us to make fundamental changes to the way we live. State and public health officials across the country are doing their best to manage this unprecedented situation. At the same time, we have been inspired by how the country has come together to support the valiant efforts of healthcare workers, with businesses stepping up to provide vital resources and support, and NGOs rallying to support vulnerable communities whose livelihoods are impacted. 


Overcoming a crisis of this scale will take sustained and concerted effort, and we want to do everything we can to help. Since the virus first began to spread, our focus at Google has been on making sure people have the information and tools they need to stay informed and connected. But we know there’s much more work ahead. 


Today, we’re sharing an update on the actions that Google has taken in India to help bring authoritative and reliable information to people, and provide features across its products that can be helpful during these trying times.


Promoting authoritative and reliable information sources 

It is crucial that people have access to health information they can trust online, so they can make the right decisions to protect themselves, and those around them, from COVID-19.  We have upped our work to curb misinformation across various platforms and prominently surface the latest updates and health advice from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) and international health authorities across Search, Maps, YouTube and the COVID-19 Spot on Google Pay.

Caption: (Left) On Search, queries for Coronavirus now display consolidated results, with tabs for quick access to information on symptoms, prevention, and more 

On Search, when a person launches a query for Coronavirus they will see a page with consolidated information including the top news stories, links to MoHFW resources, as well as access to authoritative content on symptoms, prevention, treatments and more. In line with government directives, when people search for medical facilities like hospitals, doctors or testing centers, we surface authoritative guidelines from the MoHFW on reaching out to central and state COVID-19 helplines that are equipped to assist with next steps.

Across YouTube’s homepage, search, and recommendation systems, we are elevating authoritative information sources such as the MoHFW and WHO, driving users directly to these websites for trustworthy and reliable information.  YouTube has also launched a Coronavirus News Shelf on the YouTube Homepage, which provides the latest news from authoritative media outlets regarding the outbreak. 


All searches and videos on YouTube related to COVID-19 trigger Information and health panels that provide additional information on the topic, linking to the MoHFW website and the global WHO website. 


                 
Caption: Information Panel (Left) and Health Panel (Right) on YouTube


In addition to elevating authoritative sources, we are also quickly removing reported videos that violate YouTube’s community guidelines, including those that discourage people from seeking medical treatment or encourage the use of unsubstantiated remedies to treat COVID-19.

Bringing helpful features to Google’s product and services

Our product teams continue to build features that enable people to find helpful resources such as instructions for preventing the spread of COVID-19, the latest statistics on the proliferation of the virus, and local helpline numbers.


The COVID-19 India website  that was launched last week collates all of this updated information, as well as live statistics, into a single, easy-to-access resource. It is available in English, Hindi and Marathi for smartphones, and in English and Hindi via Google Assistant for KaiOS feature phones. It will be rolled out soon in several other Indian languages.




Caption: (Left) The India COVID-19 page, available in Hindi, English, and Marathi, and (Right) on KaiOS in Hindi and English via Google Assistant


Public service campaign: In order to ensure that the safety and prevention best practices are disseminated widely, we have collaborated with the MoHFW to run a public service campaign titled ‘Do the Five’, and prominently surface and promote assets from MoHFW which includes educational video content featuring Amitabh Bachchan, across YouTube, Search and Google Assistant. The campaign has reached hundreds of millions people seeking this information and continues to reach millions more every day. 


Building solutions for crisis response


With the pandemic causing disruption to scores of people, we are working to support those whose livelihoods and access to basic sustenance are at risk -- especially the millions of migrant workers returning to their hometowns, or stranded in the cities without a source of income or food. 


We have started indicating the locations of hundreds of food and night shelters set up by the government across the country, accessible through Google Maps, Search, and Google Assistant. To date, this includes more than 33 cities with over 1,500 food and night shelters identified. Users can query in both English and Hindi, and efforts are on to bring this to other Indian languages over the coming weeks, as well as adding additional shelters in more cities across the country.


The information can also be accessed via Google Assistant on KaiOS in both Hindi and English. Simply ask ‘ में भोजन केंद्र’ and ‘ में रैन बसेरा’, or ‘Food shelters in ’ and ‘Night shelters in ’. Vodafone-Idea subscribers can also use the Phone Line offering that enables 2G feature phone users to get details of nearby food and night shelters by dialing the toll-free number 000 800 9191 000, and using the queries above.
Caption: (Left) Night Shelters and (Right) Night Food Shelters are now available on Google Maps, in English and Hindi

To help public health officials in their decision-making, we have published COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports that capture the percentage change in traffic and movement across public places such as parks, transit stations and grocery stores. These reports are based on the same aggregated, anonymized insights that are used in products such as Google Maps.


Contributing to crisis response and upholding our responsibility

We are committed to supporting governments, local health agencies, and not-for-profit developers offering publicly-available crisis response apps and sites in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We have introduced Ads grants, Google Maps Platform Crisis Response credits and are offering our support for the APIs and SDKs that are most commonly used for crisis response implementations.
Caption: Live donations counter for PM-CARES (Left) and Nearby Spot (Right) on Google Pay

With the lockdown and social distancing norms in place, digital payments have become more important than ever and Google Pay is an additional surface to provide key information regarding COVID-19. We’ve launched the COVID-19 Spot on Google Pay that aggregates all pertinent information on the topic, sourced directly from the MoHFW. The Spot also helps users donate to PM-CARES or to NGOs such as SEEDS, Give India, United Way and Charities Aid Foundation, which are working towards procurement of protective equipment for medical workers and relief for lockdown-impacted daily wagers. Donations to PM-CARES on Google Pay have thus far collected over ₹105 crores and continue to grow.

Additionally on Google Pay, Nearby Spot has been introduced to help users see local stores providing essentials like groceries, which are currently open. We think this information will help users to contact the appropriate business, pay digitally and aid social distancing efforts. The Nearby Spot has been rolled out in Bengaluru and will be launching in Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, and Delhi soon.  

COVID-19 puts intense demands on us all, and we’re determined to uphold our responsibility in this unprecedented time: to enable access to trusted information and be ready to stand with India and do all we can to help as we overcome Coronavirus pandemic, and shape a stronger future.

Posted by Sanjay Gupta, Vice President and Country Manager, Google India and Caesar Sengupta, Vice President, Payments and Next Billion Users 

Our commitment to India during COVID-19 and beyond

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact the health and lives of many across the country, requiring all of us to make fundamental changes to the way we live. State and public health officials across the country are doing their best to manage this unprecedented situation. At the same time, we have been inspired by how the country has come together to support the valiant efforts of healthcare workers, with businesses stepping up to provide vital resources and support, and NGOs rallying to support vulnerable communities whose livelihoods are impacted. 


Overcoming a crisis of this scale will take sustained and concerted effort, and we want to do everything we can to help. Since the virus first began to spread, our focus at Google has been on making sure people have the information and tools they need to stay informed and connected. But we know there’s much more work ahead. 


Today, we’re sharing an update on the actions that Google has taken in India to help bring authoritative and reliable information to people, and provide features across its products that can be helpful during these trying times.


Promoting authoritative and reliable information sources 

It is crucial that people have access to health information they can trust online, so they can make the right decisions to protect themselves, and those around them, from COVID-19.  We have upped our work to curb misinformation across various platforms and prominently surface the latest updates and health advice from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) and international health authorities across Search, Maps, YouTube and the COVID-19 Spot on Google Pay.

Caption: (Left) On Search, queries for Coronavirus now display consolidated results, with tabs for quick access to information on symptoms, prevention, and more 

On Search, when a person launches a query for Coronavirus they will see a page with consolidated information including the top news stories, links to MoHFW resources, as well as access to authoritative content on symptoms, prevention, treatments and more. In line with government directives, when people search for medical facilities like hospitals, doctors or testing centers, we surface authoritative guidelines from the MoHFW on reaching out to central and state COVID-19 helplines that are equipped to assist with next steps.

Across YouTube’s homepage, search, and recommendation systems, we are elevating authoritative information sources such as the MoHFW and WHO, driving users directly to these websites for trustworthy and reliable information.  YouTube has also launched a Coronavirus News Shelf on the YouTube Homepage, which provides the latest news from authoritative media outlets regarding the outbreak. 


All searches and videos on YouTube related to COVID-19 trigger Information and health panels that provide additional information on the topic, linking to the MoHFW website and the global WHO website. 


                 
Caption: Information Panel (Left) and Health Panel (Right) on YouTube


In addition to elevating authoritative sources, we are also quickly removing reported videos that violate YouTube’s community guidelines, including those that discourage people from seeking medical treatment or encourage the use of unsubstantiated remedies to treat COVID-19.

Bringing helpful features to Google’s product and services

Our product teams continue to build features that enable people to find helpful resources such as instructions for preventing the spread of COVID-19, the latest statistics on the proliferation of the virus, and local helpline numbers.


The COVID-19 India website  that was launched last week collates all of this updated information, as well as live statistics, into a single, easy-to-access resource. It is available in English, Hindi and Marathi for smartphones, and in English and Hindi via Google Assistant for KaiOS feature phones. It will be rolled out soon in several other Indian languages.




Caption: (Left) The India COVID-19 page, available in Hindi, English, and Marathi, and (Right) on KaiOS in Hindi and English via Google Assistant


Public service campaign: In order to ensure that the safety and prevention best practices are disseminated widely, we have collaborated with the MoHFW to run a public service campaign titled ‘Do the Five’, and prominently surface and promote assets from MoHFW which includes educational video content featuring Amitabh Bachchan, across YouTube, Search and Google Assistant. The campaign has reached hundreds of millions people seeking this information and continues to reach millions more every day. 


Building solutions for crisis response


With the pandemic causing disruption to scores of people, we are working to support those whose livelihoods and access to basic sustenance are at risk -- especially the millions of migrant workers returning to their hometowns, or stranded in the cities without a source of income or food. 


We have started indicating the locations of hundreds of food and night shelters set up by the government across the country, accessible through Google Maps, Search, and Google Assistant. To date, this includes more than 33 cities with over 1,500 food and night shelters identified. Users can query in both English and Hindi, and efforts are on to bring this to other Indian languages over the coming weeks, as well as adding additional shelters in more cities across the country.


The information can also be accessed via Google Assistant on KaiOS in both Hindi and English. Simply ask ‘ में भोजन केंद्र’ and ‘ में रैन बसेरा’, or ‘Food shelters in ’ and ‘Night shelters in ’. Vodafone-Idea subscribers can also use the Phone Line offering that enables 2G feature phone users to get details of nearby food and night shelters by dialing the toll-free number 000 800 9191 000, and using the queries above.
Caption: (Left) Night Shelters and (Right) Night Food Shelters are now available on Google Maps, in English and Hindi

To help public health officials in their decision-making, we have published COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports that capture the percentage change in traffic and movement across public places such as parks, transit stations and grocery stores. These reports are based on the same aggregated, anonymized insights that are used in products such as Google Maps.


Contributing to crisis response and upholding our responsibility

We are committed to supporting governments, local health agencies, and not-for-profit developers offering publicly-available crisis response apps and sites in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We have introduced Ads grants, Google Maps Platform Crisis Response credits and are offering our support for the APIs and SDKs that are most commonly used for crisis response implementations.
Caption: Live donations counter for PM-CARES (Left) and Nearby Spot (Right) on Google Pay

With the lockdown and social distancing norms in place, digital payments have become more important than ever and Google Pay is an additional surface to provide key information regarding COVID-19. We’ve launched the COVID-19 Spot on Google Pay that aggregates all pertinent information on the topic, sourced directly from the MoHFW. The Spot also helps users donate to PM-CARES or to NGOs such as SEEDS, Give India, United Way and Charities Aid Foundation, which are working towards procurement of protective equipment for medical workers and relief for lockdown-impacted daily wagers. Donations to PM-CARES on Google Pay have thus far collected over ₹105 crores and continue to grow.

Additionally on Google Pay, Nearby Spot has been introduced to help users see local stores providing essentials like groceries, which are currently open. We think this information will help users to contact the appropriate business, pay digitally and aid social distancing efforts. The Nearby Spot has been rolled out in Bengaluru and will be launching in Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, and Delhi soon.  

COVID-19 puts intense demands on us all, and we’re determined to uphold our responsibility in this unprecedented time: to enable access to trusted information and be ready to stand with India and do all we can to help as we overcome Coronavirus pandemic, and shape a stronger future.

Posted by Sanjay Gupta, Vice President and Country Manager, Google India and Caesar Sengupta, Vice President, Payments and Next Billion Users