Google’s digital payment app 'Tez' launched

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on 18 September 2017 launched Google’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-based digital payment service called ‘Tez’ in New Delhi.

With this move, the search giant has become the latest international giant to enter the fast-growing digital payments space in India.

Speaking on the occasion, Arun Jaitley said, Google team saw great potential in the remonetisation period after the demonetization. The minister stated that the need for finding an alternative to cash was never at centre stage in India's economic agenda.

He further expressed confidence that what had started as a compulsion for digitisation post-demonetisation will soon turn into convenience with the launch of Tez.

Key Highlights

• The new digital payments app is expected to make a major change in the digital payments landscape in India.

• It would support several local languages including Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu.

• The Google payment App is powered by UPI, a payments protocol built by the Government-backed National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

• The word Tez means fast in Hindi.

• The Finance Minister himself conducted the first transaction on the app.

The app’s launch puts it in direct competition with the popular mobile wallet provider in India, Paytm, which is backed by Softbank and Alibaba.

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