Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will launch the Google's Unified Payments Interface based digital payment service called Tez on Septembe...
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will launch the Google's Unified Payments Interface based digital payment service called Tez on September 18, 2017 in Delhi. The news was confirmed by the finance ministry via tweet. Google on September 14 had sent out invites for a September 18 event to " share details on the launch of a new product developed grounds up for India."
The news was first reported by The-Ken.com. According to the report, "Google, Alphabet Inc's subsidiary, will make an entry into India's fast growing and super-competitive digital payment ecosystem" on September 18.
"As we continue to make strides in ensuring that our products continue to serve the needs of everyone, we invite you to a press conference to share details on the launch of a new product developed grounds up for India," reads the Google invite.
FM Shri @arunjaitley to launch the Google Digital Payment app ‘‘ TEZ” on Monday, 18th September, 2017 in the national capital.— Ministry of Finance (@FinMinIndia) September 16, 2017
Tez is a localised payment service which according to The Ken will offer a comprehensive set of payments options like government-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI) along with Google's own suite of apps and other popular payments services in India like Paytm and MobiKiwik. The service may work on the lines of Android Pay, a digital wallet platform also owned by Google.
Reportedly, the service will be available to both desktop and smartphone users. The desktop users could find the service as Chrome widget while the mobile users could run it as an app from Play Store or come pre-installed with the OS.
With Tez, Google will also join the bandwagon of UPI-based service provider in the country. WhatsApp which has over 1.3 billion active users today, is also working on a payment feature and there are reports that the beta version of the feature is running on Android. There are reports that the social media giant Facebook is also in talks with National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to enable UPI-enabled payment option on its platform.
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