EXCLUSIVE— Is Google looking to become a fintech power?
The company, which reported strong results for its third quarter yesterday, seems to be expanding its focus on finance, specifically on platforms that integrate or otherwise support payments and mobile technologies in its many markets.
For instance, while Google did not release numbers for its mobile POS payment wallet Android Pay, the company did report strong growth for one of its mobile payment apps: its Indian mobile payments app, Tez, a market that has just recently overtaken the U.S. as the second largest for smartphones in the world (the first, of course, being China).
Sundar Pichai, chief executive for Alphabet, said on the call:
In India last month, we launched Tez, a mobile payments and commerce app that already has more than 7.5 million users who have made more than 30 million transactions. I’m really excited about the potential this brings for India’s mostly cash-based economy.
In addition to Tez, growth in search and other mobile statistics was strong, Pichai said on the call. Google is also focusing a considerable amount on partnerships with retailers and merchants when it comes to payments and other, fintech-adjacent services: it has just opened a new payment API in Brazil, alongside local fintech EBANX, to establish payment methods for global merchants.
Most notably, the company is continuing to grow its cloud business. While Google bundles this growth into its “other revenues” bucket, alongside hardware and play, revenues were up 40% YoY at $3.4 billion.
Several companies moved to Google Cloud this quarter, Pichai noted on the call, including another popular Indian app, Hike (used for messaging), as well as mobile wallet service PayPal.
All of this together seems to suggest that Google has more than a passing interest in financial services, especially as it plans to keep hunting for investments in emerging technologies (including mobile in certain regions, Pichai said) and begins to knit together those services in the cloud.
Along with Amazon, which also reported strong results yesterday, financial services companies should definitely keep an eye on how Google/Alphabet’s fintech projects progress.