Google Pay to enter wealth management services with ‘Gold Account’
24/03/2019
Bengaluru: Internet giant Google is readying a service that will allow Indians to buy gold on its mobile payments app Google Pay.
The plan is to launch ‘Gold Account’ a gold-linked savings scheme for users to purchase gold at prevailing market prices, maintain gold balance virtually and redeem at a later stage as gold coins or cash. The move would mark the entry of Google Pay into wealth management services. Launched as Tez in September 2017, and rebranded as Google Pay a year later, the app currently allows peer-to-peer and peer-to-merchant payments. In September, Google said the payments app had 25 million monthly active users (MAUs) people who use the app at least once a month in India. According to Google Pay’s terms and conditions page, first pointed out by business intelligence platform, Paper.vc, the California-based technology major has tied up with MMTC-PAMP India, a joint venture between state-owned metals trading company MMTC, and Swiss refiner of precious metals PAMP SA, for the gold accounts. Gold bought through Google Pay will be sourced from and maintained in physical form by MMTC-PAMP. To activate the gold account, users will have to complete the prescribed know-your-customer (KYC) formalities. Once done, they can purchase virtual gold units at the current market price using Google Pay app. The account balance will reflect the current price of the accumulated gold units, which can be redeemed as physical gold or cash in the account once those are equivalent to the minimum denomination of, say, 1 gram of actual gold.
It is, however, not clear when Google will roll out the service. A Google India spokesperson declined to comment.
In its terms and conditions page, Google stated that MMTC-PAMP will be responsible for “the sale, delivery and repurchase of gold and other related service”, such as the pricing information on Google Pay. All gold transactions will be between MMTC-PAMP and the customers.
Share This Story |
|
Comment On This Story |
|
|
|
|