BHIM And PhonePe, Step Aside: Tez Is Here To Steal The Market

The Finance Ministry led by Arun Jaitley has confirmed, through a tweet, the launch of the latest application to facilitate the Digital India Campaign, Google’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) based digital service called Tez. The app would be launched in a press conference on Monday, i.e., 18th September 2017.

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

On 14th September 2017 (Thursday), Google had sent out invitations for the launch event to be held on 18th September 2017 (Monday). The specially designed invite for the event read:

“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”.

As reported by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), Google had completed the testing of the Tez app in July 2017, following which it had been awaiting the approval of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

The app will work in a fashion similar to that of existing services like Android Pay and Google Wallet. However, one major feature that will differentiate the Tez app from its numerous counterparts is that it will come with a more exhaustive set of payment options, including support for digital payment apps such as Paytm and Mobikwik.

The launch of the UPI based service by Google is for sure going to provide tough competition to similar services already existing in the country, including BHIM and PhonePe, due to immense respect a big name like Google commands.

According to sources, many tech giants like WhatsApp and Facebook, which have billions of users all over the world, are also in talks with NPCI to develop and integrate a UPI based service in their apps. The reason behind the increasing popularity and importance of UPI based services comes from the fact that money can be transferred from/to different bank accounts using a virtual address, that is, neither IFSC code nor MMID is required to make the transfer.