Of late, India has been going digital. Ever since the Prime Minister announced the demonetization drive last year, India’s evolution towards becoming a cashless economy picked up pace. The UPI platform suddenly came into prominence and the awareness around it increased. Google is now working on Tez, Google’s UPI enabled payment application for India.

This is a unique move from Google as it is rare that we see Google operating towards apps that deal with transfer of money beyond the US. The app is going to be quite different from what we have seen in Google Wallet and Android Pay and is going to be UPI-focused.

UPI, for those who might not be aware, stands for Unified Payments Interface – which is a government backed service for quick and easy transfer of money. UPI involves users creating a Virtual Private Address (VPA) linked to their bank account. Any time you want to receive money from someone, you can simply send in your UPI VPA and the money would be transferred instantly. Google’s Tez is based on this platform.

Tez, which literally translates to Fast, is yet to be officially announced by Google. However it was spotted by Indian news website the-ken. The-Ken indicates that Tez might also soon be made available in Indonesia and the Philippines as Google has filed for trademarks in these countries too.

Interestingly, Tez will be a dedicated Android app for payments and will not be introduced as a part of another app. As of now, Google has declined to comment on Tez but it is expected that the announcement will follow soon.

This is going to be a major step up towards increasing awareness around UPI and getting more users to make use of this government backed payment platform. Stay tuned with us for more updates on Google’s Tez.

Source: The-Ken