Over 4 lakh Indians embrace Google 'Tez' in just 24 hours, Pichai bullish

The Unified Payments Interface (UPI) app Tez, with over four lakh active users, is free of charge and allows its users to make small or big payments straight from their bank accounts.

Union Minister of Finance Arun Jaitely at the launch of Google's Unified Payments Interface (UPI)-based digital payment service called Tez. (Image: Twitter @GoogleIndia)

New Delhi: Within 24 hours of Google digital payment app 'Tez' being launched in India, Google has seen nearly 1.8 crore gross merchandise volume (GMV) done with over four lakh active users.

"In the past 24 hours, 1.8 Crore GMV done on Tez already with 410,000 active users," a Google spokesperson told IANS on Tuesday. Gross merchandise value or GMV is the total value of merchandise sold over a given period of time.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley launched the app in the Capital on Monday afternoon, saying the idea of "Tez" was discussed by Google's India-born CEO Pichai in January, just after demonetisation. "Google saw a great potential in Indian economy and businesses," Jaitley said, adding that Google's new digital payments app over the next few months was likely to make major advances in digital transaction volumes. Replying to this, Pichai on Tuesday tweeted: "We hope that the launch of @TezByGoogle will help take India one step closer to your vision of @_DigitalIndia". 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. 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 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. According to D.D. Mishra, Research Director, Gartner, Tez provides promising features which are in-line with the requirements. "It is too early to say whether it can be a game changer as evolution in this business is going to continue, but yes it has the capabilities to bring some disruption as of now," Mishra said in a statement. Moreover, Google's information about an individual's preferences can play a good role in enabling business to know their preferences and provide offers with interesting options. "The mobile wallet industry too, is evolving and we are at an interesting stage in this competition. Eventually, UPI payments will have an upper hand if it continues to remain free and provide better security, convenience and add more Value Added Services," Mishra informed. Google also announced "Tez for Business" which offers businesses new ways to unlock the potential of digital payments and engage their customers. "Google will need to keep adding new innovative services on top of it to continue to differentiate and build an ecosystem quickly to succeed. It is expected to face competition from UPI and wallet applications who are also working on similar initiatives," Mishra added.