Google's digital payment app 'Tez' that was launched in India on September 18 has been downloaded five million times on the Play Store.
Within 24 hours of Tez being launched, Google saw nearly 1.8 crore gross merchandise volume (GMV) done with over four lakh active users. Built on the Indian government-supported Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Tez allows users, free of charge, to make small or big payments straight from their bank accounts.
According to the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI), the number of transactions on UPI has crossed three crore in September. The number of transactions on UPI platform increased to 3.07 crore in September as against 1.66 crore in August — an increase of 85.32 per cent. Of the 3.07 crore transactions, BHIM's share was 76.03 lakh — a market share of nearly 24.7 per cent.
The Google Tez app works in partnership with four Banks — Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and State Bank of India — to facilitate the processing of payments across over 50 UPI-enabled banks. The app was built for India, working on the vast majority of the country's smartphones and is available in English and seven Indian languages — Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu.
The app is available for both Android and iOS users, and is free to transact on if you are a customer or a small business. Unlike Paytm or Mobikwik, Tez is not a wallet. This means it will not store your money on the Tez account ever. Instead, all your transactions will be go directly through your bank accounts. So if you receive money through someone using Tez, it will be credited to your bank account instead of an app wallet.
With inputs from Digit NewsDesk