Google has made it easier to recharge prepaid mobiles here in India. Starting today, you can recharge your prepaid SIM cards right from Google Search on your Android smartphone. Supported mobile operators are Airtel, Vodafone-Idea, Jio, and BSNL.
To use the feature, perform a Google search query similar to “Prepaid mobile recharge” or “SIM recharge”. In doing so, you will see a “Mobile Recharge” section in the search results where you get the option to enter your mobile number, operator, and circle.
Once you’ve filled the aforesaid fields, tap on Browse Plans button to view the available plans. Similar to dedicated mobile recharge applications, you will be shown the popular, full talktime, 4G/3G/2G data, special recharge, roaming, topup, and recommended plans in their respective sections.
You will also be shown the offers that you can avail when you recharge with specific plans. Mobikwik, Paytm, FreeCharge and Google Pay are the available mobile payment service providers. Choose the recharge plan of your choice and Google will redirect you to the payment screen.
It is worth mentioning that you will still need to have these apps installed on your phone to avail the service. There is a “Back to Google” button that will take you back to Google Search once you’re done with the recharge.
The blog post mentions that the feature is now available to all signed-in users on Android devices. There is no word on the availability of the feature for iPhones yet. The feature is present on my Android phone while it was missing on an iPhone that I checked on. We could expect the feature to expand to iOS in the future.
