Jaitley launches Google’s free UPI-enabled payment app Tez

NEW DELHI: Google on Monday launched its free UPI-enabled payment app Tez where users can carry out direct transactions between bank accounts. The app, launched exclusively for India, has four banking partners: Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and State Bank of India. The payments will, however, work across over 50 banks. Google vice president for “Next Billion Users” Caesar Sengupta told TOI that the app had over 50,000 users and Rs 11 lakh gross merchandise value by afternoon.

Speaking at the launch, union finance minister Arun Jaitley said that demonetisation has made digital transactions a habit. “In the month of November, December and January, a lot of people went in for digitisation in terms of mode of payment, more out of compulsion rather than finding it a convenient method of transaction. But that compulsion created a habit for people,” said Jaitley, who launched the app with an “auspicious” Rs 11 to Google’s vice-president South-East Asia and India, Rajan Anandan.

UPI or United Payments Interface is a digital payment protocol developed by the government-backed National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). Currently, 55 banks have UPI-enabled digital payment services.

On Google’s Tez, one can pay or “request” money from an individual, which shows up like a chat on the user’s phone screen. However, like the shared expense tracking app Splitwise, it doesn’t yet have a feature to settle accounts or divide expenses between people. The app also has “cash mode” where two users present on the same spot can transact among themselves by pressing the cash mode button together. In this case, they needn’t exchange phone numbers or UPI IDs. The phone detects the other device in its vicinity using Google’s proprietary “Audio QR ultrasound” technology. In addition to having banks on board, Google has also signed up merchants PVR Cinemas and RedBus.

Credit cards and mobile wallet app integrations are next. “We will work with credit card companies to bring credit card support later. And wallets will also come soon. We are working with wallet vendors,” Sengupta told TOI post the launch. Google’s own mobile wallet app, Google Wallet, is not available in India. Its payment app, Android Pay is also not available here.

“We have great presence of Android Pay across many places like the US, the UK, Japan, Australia and a bunch of other countries. Android Pay is built on NFC and you can pay directly with a phone on a Point of Sale (PoS) terminal. We realised, in India, that wouldn’t work. Credit card penetration is less than three per cent and there are very few PoS terminals. Most phones don’t have NFC. We had to build something for India. Second, we realised UPI was happening here, which is truly innovative. There is no other system like UPI globally,” says Sengupta, adding that focusing on bank-to-bank transactions was a conscious choice.

“What we realised in India was people like keeping money in their bank accounts. Because they earn interest…so they feel safe and secure. This is why we made an explicit choice to base it on UPI and bank-to-bank transactions,” he said.

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