Google is looking to take some of Tez's India-specific payment features worldwide and expand into consumer transactions.
Google announced this week that it was unifying all of its digital payment options, including India's widely used Tez service, under one banner: Google Pay.
Google Pay already operates in 20 countries outside of India, but Google hopes to use the massively popular features of Tez for Google Pay services across the world as it expands deeper into Asia.
"We have learnt that when we build for India, we build for the world, and we believe that many of the innovations and features we have pioneered with Tez will work globally," said Caesar Sengupta, Google's general manager for Payments and the Next Billion Users Initiative.
"When we build for India and next billion user markets, we are building for everyone."
In a blog post announcing the move, Sengupta touted Tez's eye-popping usage numbers and said the service, built specifically for India, was a model that Google could use to provide similar services to Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia and Malaysia. Over the last 3 to 5 years, the emergence of relatively cheap Android smartphones has allowed more people in more countries to gain access to mobile devices, allowing apps to slowly take over the market as they have in countries like the U.S. or China.
In only one year of operation, Tez is now used by 22 million businesses and people per month in over 300,000 suburbs, towns, and villages, according to Google. People use Tez for a variety of financial transactions, including splitting bills over dinner and paying for bus tickets.
Sengupta said Tez has handled more than 750 million transactions worth $30 billion dollars -- 200 thousand crore rupees -- annually. He attributed the name change, surprisingly, to Tez's success, writing that other governments have approached Google about creating digital payment transaction platforms for their countries.
Tez was built specifically for India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payment system, allowing users to connect their Tez account to their bank accounts and transfer money between India's largest banks. India is still primarily a cash-based economy, but the adoption of Tez and other apps has increased rapidly. Google says India's monthly UPI transactions have grown to 14 times what they were since Tez started operating last September.
"This change is not just an indication of user traction in India, it also paves the way for you to use Google Pay in more places on the web, apps, in stores and across Google products, so that payments can be seamless in everything you do," Sengupta said.
"India is now one of the world leaders in digital payments innovation, and we're even more motivated to continue our efforts to support India's digital transformation."
Google told the Economic Times in India this week that the change was made because Google is consolidating its payment apps and "would want to use a global name to avoid confusion." It notes that in January this year, Google combined Google Wallet and Android Pay into Google Pay.
It's already been slowly changing the in-app branding to Google Pay, but with the other changes, Tez users will have access to an expanded panoply of payment options. Sengupta said the number of places that will accept Google Pay is expanding greatly, both "online on apps and website, as well as in branded retail stores." Google Pay will either be heavily integrated into or partnered with a bunch of new outlets and apps, including BookMyshow, Big Bazaar, e-Zone, and FBB.
With the update, Google is expanding services for merchants too, giving you more options for receiving payments, integrating your business into Google Search and Maps, and interacting with customers. Right now, these features are only available in Bangalore and Delhi but will be rolled out to a larger audience soon.
To add on to the new features, Google is getting deeper into the loan business, creating an avenue for users to take out pre-approved loans faster than the normal process. Partnering with HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Federal Bank, and Kotak Mahindra Bank, Google is aiming to simplify the loan process and give more Indians access to country's financial system.
In India, Google Pay is battling Paytm and PhonePe for control of the market, and their expanded offerings may give them a leg up on the competition. The Economic Times said India was "one of the largest markets in terms of app downloads for Google, primarily due to the dominance of Android smartphones in India and the falling mobile Internet tariffs."
*this article was featured on Download.com on August 29, 2018: https://download.cnet.com/blog/download-blog/google-rebrands-tez-as-google-pay-with-big-plans-for-asian-expansion/