Google Pay's festive ad advertises its in-app game, for the first time

Google Pay's latest festive ad is a push for its inapp game. The Go India Game allows users to virtually 'visit' all the Indian cities in the game by 25 November 2020 to win the Go India Champion reward. The Go India Champion reward is an assured reward of ₹101-501 and will be given immediately on completing all the cities.

In the ad, we see different renditions of what people consider to be home. A man from Kolkata received cooking lessons over a video call, a woman from Goa sits in a sandbox, imagining the beach and the sand between her toes, another older woman draws a traditional South Indian rangoli in front of her house and tells her that Madurai is wherever the kolam is drawn.

The ad also features the characters speaking in their native languages while subtly pushing the audience and viewers to stay home. The ad comes at a strategic time as in a pre-corona world, people would fly to their hometowns to celebrate Dusshera and Diwali.

It is also strategic as contactless payments are seen as a safer alternative to handling currency notes - a possible vehicle for the spread of the coronavirus in India